100 MILLION downloads, a Grant, and Jobs!

Post by **hugh** » April 5th, 2012, 12:07 pm

Dear LibriVoxers,

some exciting news:

1. We got a small ($50k) grant from the Mellon Foundation to undertake some
sorely needed tech improvements. See:

http://librivox.org/2012/04/05/100-million-dowloads-and-a-mellon-foundation-grant/

And following from 1,

2. We are hiring (on a contract basis) two or three people:
* a technical project manager
* a PHP/Ruby developer
* a sysadmin/systems architect

Strong preference to applicants from the LirbiVox community, if you are
interested, please follow the link below, and apply:

http://librivox.org/2012/04/05/jobs-were-hiring-a-tech-project-manager-and-a-developer/

Finally,

3. Internet Archive reports that we've had more than 100 million downloads.
That's pretty great!

Thanks to everyone !

Best,

Hugh McGuire
Founder (though rather absentee of late)

Peter Why · Post by **Peter Why** » April 5th, 2012, 11:27 pm

Not I. I'm glad of the donation and the chance to improve our systems though.

Hugh,
When I received your email at home, I thought it was someone phishing ... because of the mis-spelling ("LirbiVox community"!) ... and came to the site itself to check.

Peter

carolb · Post by **carolb** » April 6th, 2012, 3:04 am

Peter Why wrote:Hugh,When I received your email at home, I thought it was someone phishing ... because of the mis-spelling ("LirbiVox community"!) ... and came to the site itself to check.

Me too!

How exciting! I feel truly privileged to be part of this great organisation.
Congratulations everyone!
...and thank you, Hugh!!

Carol

Post by **hugh** » April 6th, 2012, 6:18 am

if i had a dollar for every time i have spelled it lirbrivox, or libirvox ... we wouldn't need a grant.

scout · Post by **scout** » April 6th, 2012, 6:32 am

Content retracted.

Daniel

RuthieG · Post by **RuthieG** » April 6th, 2012, 7:16 am

If I had a dollar for every time I have CORRECTED your spelling of LibriVox, Hugh, we wouldn't need a grant. :p

LibriVox members, especially those who joined more recently, may not be aware of the appalling technical problems we have had over the last year or two, from most of which they have been carefully protected. Our gallant volunteer programmers and sysadmin kept LibriVox going for years on a budget of about 0$, give or take a dollar or two. The growth of LibriVox necessitates a complete overhaul of the software that they generously wrote and maintained, and hence the need for paid assistance now so that we can go forward with confidence and continue to expand in years to come.

Ruth

scout · Post by **scout** » April 6th, 2012, 10:22 am

Content retracted.

Daniel

Post by **TriciaG** » April 6th, 2012, 10:30 am

We don't have a need of funds right now. If we do in future, we'll do a fundraising campaign like we did a year or so ago.

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » April 7th, 2012, 2:35 am

Scout, there are other places that LV feeds off of that can always use a donation. Distributed proofreaders, Archive.org and Gutenberg to name a few.

Distributed proofreaders prepares text for Gutenberg where we use MANY texts from and Archive stores all our completed files FOR FREE.

Esther

scout · Post by **scout** » April 7th, 2012, 3:18 am

Content retracted.

Daniel

Cori · Post by **Cori** » April 7th, 2012, 3:52 am

Here you go, scout:

http://archive.org/donate/ (they use JustGive, Paypal or Bitcoin, and provide an email contact if none of those are suitable.)

or,

http://www.pgdp.net/c/faq/dpf.php (DP donate page, which has Paypal link)

or,

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Project_Gutenberg_Needs_Your_Donation