Please make a new Librivox category: Short Books (<50Mb)

mjfillen · Post by **mjfillen** » October 18th, 2016, 4:19 pm

I love Librivox.org and listen to the book all the time, except...
I suppose my attention span must be short or something, and I get bored by books droning on and on and on...
Could you make a new category that all books could automatically get sorted into?
Maybe call it something like
Short Books (under 50Mb)
That would be great!

tovarisch · Post by **tovarisch** » October 18th, 2016, 4:43 pm

Could it be that you're listening to wrong books? I've been enjoying Anthony Trollope (we have quite a few of his works recorded) lately, and they are at least 30 chapters each... Plot twists galore! Takes me at least a fortnight to get through one book of his.

kayray · Post by **kayray** » October 18th, 2016, 5:45 pm

Hi mjfillen,

Try some short stories. If one is not to your taste, you can move right on to the next :)

Here's a link to some short story collections: https://librivox.org/search?q=short%20stories&search_form=advanced

Here are our short Sci-Fi collections: https://librivox.org/group/435?primary_key=435&search_category=group&search_page=1&search_form=get_results

And here is short non-fiction! https://librivox.org/group/569?primary_key=569&search_category=group&search_page=1&search_form=get_results

And here are some more collections of various types of short works: https://librivox.org/search?q=short%20works&search_form=advanced

I hope this helps you find something that you love to listen to! :)

kayray · Post by **kayray** » October 18th, 2016, 5:49 pm

P.S. to Tovarisch, I've fallen in love with Trollope over the past year or so. I just listened to the one about the missing will, oh what was it called... "Cousin Henry"! Nothing really "happens", but it was completely gripping and I enjoyed every second. Trollope was a master.

mjfillen · Post by **mjfillen** » October 18th, 2016, 6:41 pm

No, those don't work.

I push play and let the book play as I fall asleep, or as I am doing something else, or even while paying attention to the story. Those recordings are MUCH bigger than 50Mb.

I have many of those recordings already, but they are not suitable for me.

The separate stories are shorter, like chapters, but the recordings are much bigger.

Something like a recording of an encyclopedia; the entries are shorter but the books are enormous.

So are not suitable for me.

Post by **annise** » October 18th, 2016, 6:49 pm

It's very unlikely to happen in the short term - it would require great software changes.
If you listen on a iThing you could try using the M4B format - it book marks and is easy to flip through chapters to find where you remember

Anne

mjfillen · Post by **mjfillen** » October 18th, 2016, 7:05 pm

You are saying that sorting by recording size would be a big software change?

That seems odd... It seems like it would be one of the easiest things to sort for...

I have no reason to know how the software is written of course, but "size" is a rather primitive value...
I hope the category can be added.

p.s. I have no gadgets with an "i" in front...

Post by **annise** » October 18th, 2016, 7:58 pm

I'm really saying that as a volunteer organisation we are not changing software in the foreseeable future. And certainly this change would not be top of our priority list then . As an aside I'd have thought it would be better based on run time which I think is in the database.

So several people have offered you ideas to work with the system we have - maybe someone will come up with a better one - or you could try using the Archive search and see if that gives you what you want.

Anne

mahne · Post by **mahne** » October 19th, 2016, 12:13 am

Hi mjfillen,

you can get another form of the catalog here: http://ekzemplaro.org/librivox/catalog/
copy that into excel and sort for totaltime.
There are some results, but most of the short stuff you won't find in that way. The reason is, we try to get every recording that is smaller than 60-70 minutes into a collection for easier handling.
Some have a reason to stand alone, these you will find.
So the easiest way is to look into those short story/sci-fi/non-fiction/poetry collections and only download what suits your time preference, not the whole collection.

Cheers
mahne

mjfillen · Post by **mjfillen** » October 19th, 2016, 8:43 pm

Okay, Annise. How do I do an archive search?

And what database do you mean and how do I sort it myself?

I went to that ekzemplaro page. I can save as .html or .txt Is there something that saves it as .xml?

I don't own Excel but I do have OpenOffice.

mahne · Post by **mahne** » October 20th, 2016, 12:14 am

Ctrl-a, Ctrl-c on the catalog website, Ctrl-v on OpenOffice (windows commands)

Advanced archive org search:
https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php

Cheers mahne

Post by **dlolso21** » October 20th, 2016, 3:34 am

mjfillen,

There are 2 more steps involved if you use http://ekzemplaro.org/librivox/catalog/ after the copy paste Manhe recommended.

1) open office seems to automatically assume that the run times are date/times - right-click on the column and select Format Cells then select the Numbers tab and chose the Format that looks like this 13:37:46 (in the lower portion of the pop-up window there is a Format Code field it should show HH:MM:SS meaning hours, minutes, seconds).

2) this catalog contains run times and not file sizes - As an approximate conversion for 1 hour of run time use 30MB file size so you should be looking at titles with a run time of about 1 1/2 hours or less if your target size is less than 50MB.

David O

Post by **annise** » October 20th, 2016, 3:49 am

Don't forget the 64kbps files are half the size of the 128kbps ones . Most people download the 64kbps zip files format
so if you manage to set a limit , you'll get twice as much for your money if you select the 64kbps ones

Anne

ekzemplaro · Post by **ekzemplaro** » October 22nd, 2016, 5:59 pm

Hello mjfillen san,

mjfillen wrote:It seems like it would be one of the easiest things to sort for...

I added a new sorting function 'sort by totaltime'.
Please visit http://ekzemplaro.org/librivox/catalog/
Please clear the case before you access this page.

Just another notice.
Something is chaned at librivox.org recently. So not all books are interfaced to my page. But most of the books are listed on my page.

I welcome your feedback.

Cheers,
Masa

Post by **annise** » October 22nd, 2016, 6:59 pm

That's kind of you Masa

To the original poster
<50 MB for a book would , if you downloaded the 64 kbps version you would need a book that was less than about 1 hour 48 minutes total listening time . If you leave out poetry projects and young children's books that is really very short . So I don't think you'll find a big range

Anne