Questions about starting a project (split from another thread)

openbookdavid · Post by **openbookdavid** » January 26th, 2019, 3:33 am

I wonder if whoever is keeping an eye on this forum might have the time to advise me on a project I have in mind.

I'd like to do some short Chaucer poems and excerpts from his longer poems, all in Middle English with the original pronunciation. I have a Gutenberg link for the complete works: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45027. Some works and excerpts will probably be more than 72 minutes long. Can I decide which poems and sections to include as I go along, or do I have to figure that out in advance? Can the short works then be made available individually in the catalogue as I finish them, or is that not possible until I decide that the collection is complete? And is it OK to divide up an individual short work into multiple sections for convenience (my own and the readers')?

A related question: Is it possible to regroup the audio files later? For instance, if I end up doing the entire Canterbury Tales, can I then bundle all those parts together as a solo book for purposes of the Librivox catalogue?

And finally, I was wondering if it's possible to redo your own earlier recordings and replace the earlier versions in the catalogue. Once I've had more practice with Middle English, I'll probably make fewer mistakes and want to redo some of the first recordings I made.

Thanks very much for your help!

David

Post by **TriciaG** » January 26th, 2019, 7:09 am

David,

I have split this off into its own thread, rather than leaving it in the post you replied to.

Can I decide which poems and sections to include as I go along, or do I have to figure that out in advance?

When you set up a project, we need to know at least a good guess as to how many sections the projects need. You as the BC will be able to add sections to the Magic Window, but only an admin can delete sections. (And this isn't hard; it's limited to admins so that there's less chance of someone accidentally deleting something they shouldn't.) So you could give a guess, then adjust the number as you work on the project.

Can the short works then be made available individually in the catalogue as I finish them, or is that not possible until I decide that the collection is complete?

They cannot be made available until the project is complete and cataloged.

And is it OK to divide up an individual short work into multiple sections for convenience (my own and the readers')?

Yes. Sections should be no more than about 72 minutes, to be able to fit on audio CDs. But you could divide them even further, as it seems like most readers and listeners prefer chunks of 20-30 minutes over longer ones.

A related question: Is it possible to regroup the audio files later? For instance, if I end up doing the entire Canterbury Tales, can I then bundle all those parts together as a solo book for purposes of the Librivox catalogue?

No. Once a project is cataloged, its stays the way it is. The project cannot get more sections added later, and the audios cannot be reused in another project.

And finally, I was wondering if it's possible to redo your own earlier recordings and replace the earlier versions in the catalogue. Once I've had more practice with Middle English, I'll probably make fewer mistakes and want to redo some of the first recordings I made.

No, because the files are sent out into the wild, and we cannot control them once they're cataloged. So your old recordings would still be out there. You could do a whole new project later on, but that would be really redundant.

The best advice I'd offer is that if you're concerned about the finished product, wait to record it until you've had enough practice to do it right the first time. (And don't forget that you can fix your mistakes as you go - if you realize they ARE mistakes. We all stumble and stutter and make mistakes as we're recording. Repeat the line or phrase that was wrong, then edit out the bad one. But I assume you're referring to mistakes you don't realize until later.)

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask more questions as needed.

openbookdavid · Post by **openbookdavid** » January 26th, 2019, 9:26 am

Thanks for that detailed and very helpful response, Tricia!

I think I'll do each individual poem or excerpt as a separate work. I guess the ones that are more than 72 minutes long or are broken up into more than one section will have to be treated as long solo projects with their own separate threads, right? And the shorter ones can go into group collections.

kayray · Post by **kayray** » January 26th, 2019, 10:09 am

I'm excited about your plans, David! I've been wishing for more Middle English recordings so that I can learn to pronounce it myself

Post by **TriciaG** » January 26th, 2019, 10:15 am

That would work fine, but keep in mind that group collections might end up being cataloged more slowly than a solo project, depending on how quickly you output these recordings.

The regular Short Poetry Collection, for example, catalogs every month. I'm not sure how different Middle English is from modern - would it be considered a whole other language? If so, they would go in the multilingual collections. I don't know how quickly they go to catalog, but I am pretty sure it's less than once a month. (They catalog when they get to a certain number of sections, I think.)

Depending on what works you're looking at, you might consider your own solo collection of poems that run 1.5 to 2 hours (or longer) of finished recording. That might end up cataloged faster than a multilingual group collection.

kayray · Post by **kayray** » January 26th, 2019, 10:22 am

TriciaG wrote: ↑January 26th, 2019, 10:15 am That would work fine, but keep in mind that group collections might end up being cataloged more slowly than a solo project, depending on how quickly you output these recordings. :) The regular Short Poetry Collection, for example, catalogs every month. I'm not sure how different Middle English is from modern - would it be considered a whole other language? If so, they would go in the multilingual collections. I don't know how quickly they go to catalog, but I am pretty sure it's less than once a month. (They catalog when they get to a certain number of sections, I think.)

Depending on what works you're looking at, you might consider your own solo collection of poems that run 1.5 to 2 hours (or longer) of finished recording. That might end up cataloged faster than a multilingual group collection.

Yes Middle English is different enough from Modern English to have its own language tag, so they would go into one of the multilingual collections, and yes they move slowwwwwwly. I think a solo collection would be the way to go.

Here are our current ME offerings (of course David you are WELCOME to record anything that's already here! Duplicates are not a problem.)

https://tinyurl.com/ya3q2zzk

openbookdavid · Post by **openbookdavid** » January 27th, 2019, 12:42 am

Thank you very much, Tricia and Kara.

I'll set up a small solo collection once I've wrapped up my current Librivox projects and given myself a little more time to practice. Meanwhile, anyone who's interested can hear some Middle English here:

https://alanbaragona.wordpress.com/the-criyng-and-the-soun/

openbookdavid · Post by **openbookdavid** » March 26th, 2019, 8:12 am

Hi Tricia and Kara, or anyone else who sees this. I'm still planning a Chaucer project (see the earlier messages in this thread), but I'm not sure what to think about the copyright issues. The problem is that the old public domain editions of Chaucer are not very good and include a lot of textual errors. There is a fairly recent edition of the Canterbury Tales available to the public online that would be suitable:

http://purl.ox.ac.uk/ota/3228

But when I checked with the rights manager at Oxford University, I was told that this edition is available under a made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/). I don't think that will work for Librivox, right?

What do people normally end up doing in situations like this? Do you see other options besides settling for one of the flawed public domain editions or making it a non-Librivox project?

Thanks for your help!

Post by **TriciaG** » March 26th, 2019, 9:42 am

A CC-BY-SA license would not be sufficient for us, correct.

What do people normally end up doing in situations like this? Do you see other options besides settling for one of the flawed public domain editions or making it a non-Librivox project?

Well, recordings for us must be from texts that are clearly public domain, so apparently recordings for us would have to be one of the flawed PD editions.

Even Legamus, our European sidekick, only uses PD materials - albeit those are PD in Europe and other Life+70 year countries rather than the convoluted US copyright term. The editor of the edition you've pulled up died in 1966, so it'll be PD in Europe on January 1, 2037.

So, no - I cannot think of any alternative besides recording and releasing it oneself with the CC-BY-SA license, as required by the rights holder.

openbookdavid · Post by **openbookdavid** » March 26th, 2019, 9:48 am

Thanks for your informative reply, Tricia.

It's good to know for certain what choices I have. I'll give it some more thought!