LibriVox Forum

mightyfelix wrote: ↑April 22nd, 2020, 1:54 pm You can record them whether they have already been recorded or not! We welcome multiple versions of books! We call it "choice of voice." If you're not sure whether or not they are in the public domain, you can post them in Book Suggestions (or here, if you like, since you already have this thread started) and someone will be along shortly to help you check.

It's easiest to use texts from Project Gutenberg or books that were published before 1925. Other texts are harder to prove. But if you're not sure, we can help!

We do strongly recommend that you start out by doing a section or two in a group project, to get used to the process of recording and the workflow that we use here, before starting out on a long book all by yourself. Or you mentioned poems, and those are a great introduction as well! We have a short poetry collection running at all times. The current one is here: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=78919

TriciaG wrote: ↑April 22nd, 2020, 1:55 pm You can use the search box on the LibriVox home page: https://librivox.org/ but if it's got apostrophes, or if you type it in a bit differently, it may not yield results. Try author name, too.

Or you can post the names/authors of the books, and we can look 'em up for you.

You can record them if they're PD, and even if they're already in the catalog. Wait until your test is OK'd first, though.

If it's a short story, the current short story collection is here: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=79286
If it's a poem, the current short poetry collection is here: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=78919

There are other collections that short works may fit into. Browse here for "collection" in the thread title: viewforum.php?f=19

Follow the instructions in the first post of all those collections.

If it's an actual book, first we recommend recording a few shorter works to get your feet wet. It's a lot of work to record a whole book - more than most people realize! Then here are the instructions for starting a solo book:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=13513

*Cross posted with mightyfelix, but some of our info doesn't overlap, so I'll post anyway*

TriciaG wrote: ↑April 23rd, 2020, 5:49 am For LibriVox, works have to be PD in the USA since the files are hosted on US servers.

For readers or listeners outside the US, works also have to be PD in the country in which they are. Downloading or recording a work by someone "recently dead" in a Life+# copyright country would be breaking that country's copyright law.

So you in the UK have two sets of rules with which to abide when dealing with LibriVox.

Regarding Gutenberg, the "bibrec" tab states whether the work is PD in the USA. It does not vet works for PD-ness elsewhere, so you have to do your own vetting for the death year of an author.

Other sites (HathiTrust.org, sometimes Google Books) will limit the viewability of works not PD where you're browsing. (Sometimes they go too far and limit views for projects that ARE PD for us. It's annoying.) Archive.org doesn't do any limitation, and often have works freely available that are copyrighted even in the US. They take them down when they get a copyright complaint.

lurcherlover wrote: ↑April 23rd, 2020, 10:00 am If you are recording in the UK an author must have died by or before 1949 (i.e. to have been dead for 70+ years) and the work must have been published by or before 1924. (I think I'm right about this but please say if I'm not).