LibriVox Forum

Super-cool, Scott! Thanks for letting us know :)

It's always nice to hear what people are doing with our recordings. I've been easing my radio contact here into the idea of a segment too. He does a lot of public service things so I thought this would fit in with his program too.

I've been on radio and TV a couple of times through work. LV makes it much easier to talk 'on air' though the one time I was 'on air' I didn't even know it was a reporter/DJ. He asked me a income tax question (I work for H & R Block) over the phone and then told me he'd recorded my answer and asked if he could play it. Of course I said YES.

Anyways, thanks for letting us know.

Esther

ps any chance you can link to us on this page? It will help bring new volunteers here.

Kara,

You're welcome! I wish I'd done so sooner.

Esther,

Radio is new for me. I started volunteering here to assist with programming the automation system. Soon, someoneasked me to record a "few" jazz shows. I now find that several hours each week are taken up with radio stuff.

I'm finally okay with hearing my voice on the air, but still roll my eyes at some of the stuff I that falls out of my mouth during a show.

Your radio contact may not have time to do book segments. It requires at least a couple hours of prep time, and can be three hours (or more) for books with lots of chapters. I want to run the Decameron, but am quite leary of the work that involves.

We've mentioned Books Out Loud to other community stations, and many like the idea in concept.

One Pacifica affiliate didn't think it was needed because they have a book reading service in their area. (We disagree, since this isn't for people who don't read, but for those who like to be "read to.")

The choice of which book is an additional problem for stations with a Programming Committee. However, the deal killer for most stations is the labor involved in preparing the book.

My process involves stitching the chapter files into one long file and then separating it into roughly 28.5 minute WAV files. Then, I add on the intros and outros with Foobar2000, save the whole book to our hard drive and update the rotation playlist.

We currently have several months' worth of books on our hard drive, but haven't figured out a good way of giving them away.

Speaking of the website, I talked to our manager today. He'll link to Librivox when that page is updated. It won't be a fast process, though; we don't have anyone dedicated to the website.

I hope it sends you volunteers. Incidentally, I do occasionally put the Librivox boilerplate into the segments, but there's no set schedule.

Hmm. This post is too long.

Scott

Scottkz88 wrote: Hmm. This post is too long.

Not at all, Scott. Thanks so much for posting this. It's great to know what lengths people will go to to use LV recordings. The fact that volunteers devote three hours to preparing these works for broadcast is wonderful. Much of this post would be a great addition to the audio file you are sending for the podcast. I think our community will be thrilled to hear you tell about how your station is using their LV recordings.

Thanks again for KZ88 using LV for their Books Out Loud, for telling us about it, and for contributing to our podcast.

Bob

Scott, would an m4b work better? We have many already in that format.

That IS a lot of work setting it up. I think I'll be lucky to simply get a plug for LV and that's fine too.

Esther

Unfortunately, it wouldn't work for us. The program plays only WAV files.

It's possible that with a different automation package we could log into a feed for a specific length of time, but ours wouldn't easily perform that that task; it's rock-solid-reliable, but old enough that doesn't play nice with the internet.

A second concern is the stopping point. I try to let the reader complete a phrase before I split the file. A purely time-based feed could lead to some hysterical cliff-hangers.

Also, 64kb is pretty low for over the air broadcast. We've done it before, but the mp3 artifacts can be just awful.

This chore is present, but no real burden; it amounts to probably 8-12 hours per quarter, which is much less than my two other shows. I volunteered for the show because you all have read many books I want to hear, and now I get to choose.

Scott

Scott

Thanks for explaining that Scott.

Esther

My pleasure!

If your radio contact wants to air these segments, we'll be happy to upload the books we've assembled onto a website--ours, his, yours, whatever works. Some of the older ones may need adjustments to the intro, but none of the newer ones include "KZ88" in the WAV file.

Scott

Hi Scott
If you wanted your hard work to be available for other radio stations you could maybe upload them to Archive - just a thought.

Anne

annise wrote:Hi Scott
If you wanted your hard work to be available for other radio stations you could maybe upload them to Archive - just a thought.

Anne

Anne, that is a FANTASTIC idea!

Esther

Anne,

That is a great idea. I'll start doing that in January (too much going on for Christmas right now).

Scott

Praise for everyone via the 'Thank a reader' feature:

I have just discovered librivox and wish to express how much I appreciate the work all the people responsible for this great site put in. I am on the road a lot for work and listening to these books has made my trips so much more enjoyable and provide company for me when I travel.
I am considering if I would be able to do some reading myself as you have inspired me.

Berta

Praise for everyone via the 'Thank a reader' feature:

Thanks to everyone at Librivox. As you can probably tell, I'm a big fan. Your web site is an accessible and much-needed bastion of literacy on the internet.

WE don't seem to have any general ones for a while, so I would just like to thank everyone who has given their time to produce all the books I have listened to over the years since I joined . I've listened to books I would never have read otherwise written by people I had never heard of about subjects I knew nothing about and found that the great majority are good , some are excellent , and a very very few I have had some difficulties following.
So thank you all whatever part you played and may there be many more

Anne