You're helping the blind

Corner Family · Post by **Corner Family** » February 14th, 2006, 8:32 am

I just want to commend everyone who is volunteering for Librivox. A friend just informed me of this site a few weeks ago. I am a blind mother of three who homeschools my children. While home schooling sighted children when you are blind is a challenge in and of itself, story time is becoming increasingly difficult. For my toddler and infant, I have about 75 board and picture books memorized. However, my five year old is quite advanced, and rarely is interested in these short books. My husband has little time to read to the children during the weeks because of his work wshcedule, and most of the reading time is done on weekends. Purchasing audio books can be quite expensive, and the library doesn't always have the books you wanted. Even if they do, it isn't always checked in. We had to wait three weeks to get Charlotte's Web, and we needed before going to a play of the story. That didn't happen. Our family is interested in the classics of literature( Little Women, Chronicles of Narnea, Peter Pan, ect.). Anyone who is volunteering is doing a great service to my family, and others in a imilar situation. Thank you so much for all of your dilligent work. Please keep it up, so that we can have as many books as soon as possible. I am sending out an email to everyone that we know to encourage their help in getting these books recorded. Thanks again, and God bless each of you for your charitable work in this way.

Gesine · Post by **Gesine** » February 14th, 2006, 8:46 am

Corner Family, thank you so much for your kind comments. Whilst we won't be doing Narnia for a loooong time (if ever) because we may only record books in the public domain, our catalogue is growing almost daily now! We have a lot of volunteers interested in children's literature and there will always be a constant stream of lovely classic children's novels, poems etc coming from LibriVox, I believe.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts, it's so nice to hear from listeners! :)

pberinstein · Post by **pberinstein** » February 14th, 2006, 10:29 am

This is wonderful to hear! Thanks so much for letting us know.

You know, Gesine and everyone, what would happen if we approached copyright holders and asked for permission to do their books? The worst that could happen is that they'd say no. Then we might actually be able to do some of those cool books we've been listing in another thread.

I'd be perfectly happy to let people do my books (after I check my contracts to make sure it's okay), but frankly, I'm not sure there will be much interest in Finding Images Online or Alternative Energy: Facts, Issues, & Statistics. I can't imagine how anyone would read all those tables!

gToon · Post by **gToon** » February 14th, 2006, 10:58 am

Thank you for your acknowledgement, Corners. Very kind of you.

kayray · Post by **kayray** » February 14th, 2006, 11:01 am

So wonderful to hear :) Thank you for letting us know that's we're helping your familiy!

Kara

ChipDoc · Post by **ChipDoc** » February 14th, 2006, 11:38 am

I'm really happy that we're able to help! I know I'm not the only one who has Radio Reading Service experience here; lots of us have been reading for years in one format or another. If you're not familiar with Radio Reading Service, it provides a different kind of reading from what you get here - R.R.S. provides "Today's Newspaper Today and This Week's Magazines This Week". They're all over the world and are available FOR FREE to the blind and print handicapped. Here is a link to a list of such services around the world:

http://iaais.org/locateservice.html

Here in Florida, and in many other states also, the Division Of Blind Services offers books on tape though the Talking Books program - also for free. Here at LibriVox, we are limited to producing only those books which are no longer under U.S. copyright, but because of their governmental affiliation, Talking Books can produce everything. They've been doing this for decades and have an immense list of books which they will happily provide you on tape. Cookbooks, Textbooks, Children's Books, Recent Novels - Talking Books does it all.

While Radio Reading Service is generally supported by a local public radio station, Talking Books generally come to you through your local library. Though I'm really happy that you're enjoying LibriVox, I'd encourage you to take advantage of all of the resources available.

Thanks for your kind words; bless you!

raouf · Post by **raouf** » February 14th, 2006, 1:32 pm

Corner Family;

It is wonderful to know that Librivox fulfills some of your needs.

If you are looking for free textbooks on the internet, here are some sources of Open-Content books (Creative Commons or public domain licenses)

* Textbook Revolution capsule descriptions of free textbooks in many disciplines.
http://textbookrevolution.org/
* The Assayer Reviews and catalog for free books.
http://theassayer.org/
* The Online Books Page 20,000 free books.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
* Wikibooks, (not quite there yet) 14,000 books including a nifty wikijunior with dinosaurs and astronomy.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

Post by **hugh** » February 14th, 2006, 1:42 pm

hi to the corners! thanks so much for stopping by, we really appreciate hearing from listeners.

hugh.