Audiobooks from Library of Congress

TheBuriedBook · Post by **TheBuriedBook** » October 2nd, 2018, 2:13 pm

Since the 1930s, the Library of Congress has been recording audio-books for the blind and handicap. As a work of the federal government, the narration is in the public domain

https://www.loc.gov/legal/#privacy_policy

> Items created by Library of Congress employees in the scope of their employment are U.S. Government works not subject to copyright in the United States (17 U.S.C. §105). Unless otherwise indicated on this site, the Library of Congress has no objection to the international use and reuse of Library U.S. Government works on loc.gov. These works are also available for worldwide use and reuse under CC0 1.0 Universal.

The above copyright notice is directly linked from the BARD website where the audio-books are cataloged.

The underlying work may be copyright, but if pre-1923 it is in the public domain eg. 'A Study in Scarlet' (1902) narrated by Alexander Scoursby in 1957.

Are these books suitable for inclusion at LibriVox? The narrations are usually by professional actors made in a LOC studio.

Post by **TriciaG** » October 2nd, 2018, 2:20 pm

We don't include works by people that don't record for us. They're freely available elsewhere.

Our purpose is not to collect recorded works, but to record them.

driegel76 · Post by **driegel76** » October 4th, 2018, 9:04 am

There seems to be some confusion here. Audiobooks in the context you are talking about are not done by "government employees". BARD is a catalog of titles recorded by the National Library Service (NLS) under copyright exemptions under the Pratt-Smoot Act. These are NOT public domain titles and may not be used as such. BARD titles are DRM controlled and not available to everyone.