Question about ProjectGutenbergs human-read books

Stephan M?bius · Post by **Stephan M?bius** » December 17th, 2005, 9:10 pm

I spent a good deal of time here tonight and found it to be a great community with a wonderfull common goal.
Getting myself more and more into it, i found that Project Gutenberg.org already proffers a HUGE amount of human read books:

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/recent/last30

This raised questions. Why not directly upload files to project gutenberg? What about exchanging data? Or links?

I see that Project Gutenberg makes it VERY hard to participate and contribute self-read "audio books" - it feels shut - and this is where this community steps in perfectly. No hurdles here.

What i am thinking is that those two, ProjectGutenberg and LibriVox should near each other.
The integration of each partys audio data into the other? That the list of already read audiobooks in Gutenberg should be easily accessible here. Obviously why. And that the LibriVox books should show up in the list of Gutenbergs human read list.

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Other than this, wonderfull stuff LibriVox is! I hope its getting BIG, like a Wikipedia for Audiobooks!
BUMMER that Fahrenheit451 is such a young book. It kinda belongs here, don?t you think?

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If i am going to participate it would be War of the Worlds with quite a german accent

But don?t pin it down yet. Please.

Stephan M?bius · Post by **Stephan M?bius** » December 17th, 2005, 9:13 pm

Ok, its not so HUGE and its this link:

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/1

Still...

kayray · Post by **kayray** » December 17th, 2005, 9:19 pm

Hugh will have to answer your gutenberg/librivox questions, but I've got to thank you for mentioning War of the Worlds! I think we're going to try to get some of our current projects done and then start up some of these great book suggestions.

I adore a German accent. How would you like to read one of the little Beatrix Potter stories over in Readers Wanted? :)

Kara

Jon Ingram · Post by **Jon Ingram** » December 18th, 2005, 12:09 am

I was just going to post something similar, Stephan. Project Gutenberg would *love* to have more human-read audiobooks, and I'd certainly like to see the material that I record uploaded to it. I've uploaded loads of books to PG, and while I'm not sure what the exact procedure is for uploading audio, there's no way it can be more annoying than an archive.org upload!

tis · Post by **tis** » December 18th, 2005, 2:23 am

"All Librivox recordings are in the public domain"

So - if anyone would like to work out how to upload things to Gutenberg, there's nothing to stop librivox stuff being put in both places! If someone figures out the process, we might even be able to automate it.

Jon Ingram · Post by **Jon Ingram** » December 18th, 2005, 3:56 am

I've contacted the PG mailing list (gutvol-d) about this, and the basic response is that they'd love to see the Librivox audio files in PG, but they have quite a backlog at the moment, because they're having to add all the files manually (as opposed to the nice semi-automatic system they have for submitting text).

I'm happy to investigate the best way to do it, using the audio version I read of the Communist Manifesto. Once I figure out exactly what files the PG people want, I'll let you know!

kayray · Post by **kayray** » December 18th, 2005, 10:52 am

oh lord, jon, i forgot you'd finished the manifesto. so sorry, must upload today!

kara

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » December 18th, 2005, 8:41 pm

If one day, we get a catalog search, maybe we can search in both databases? And give mixed results with entries pointing to the librivox files and others pointing to the Gutenberg audio-files.
How would PG feel about that?

Then again huge work increase for our coder to work with both databases - jonathan is it?

Post by **hugh** » December 18th, 2005, 9:07 pm

Hi folks,

I have been in touch with Gutenberg CEO greg newby - very early in LibriVox history. He was supportive of our efforts, and encouraging, though at the time we were just beginning, so he said, sort of, good luck lets talk later.

I will contact them again. Ideal situation is gutenberg linking to us; or even hosting mirror of our audio... and I guess LibriVox - if we can get enough administrative volunteers - could officially be a Gutenberg audio partner, as we are building lots of expertise in this process. In fact we may be able to provide software to help them in their audio management, and if its something we want to do, could help curate the audio.

so answer: yes, partnering with gutenberg is part of our plans, yes they know about us, and we have discussed it. and right now we are waiting to beef up our catalog, then we'll go back and chat with them again.

Hugh.

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » December 18th, 2005, 9:23 pm

Thanks hugh for taking the time to explain. Sounds wunderbar!

Post by **hugh** » December 26th, 2005, 8:36 am

Greg Newby, CEO of Gutenberg, responded to an email I sent a while ago - we have a call planned for Jan4.

h.

Cori · Post by **Cori** » February 18th, 2006, 4:14 am

Acting as a tail-end charlie here, it's very easy to upload audio books as part of the 'final' book submission to Project Gutenberg(PG) (from Distributed Proofreaders (DP), anyway, I've not tried any other method.)

Perhaps we can consider working on some books which are in progress through DP (perhaps when they've done all the proofing & formatting, and much of the post-processing, ie. are in the smoothreading point.) Then everything gets sent off to PG in one bundle, and it's much easier to post from there.

The only downside to that is that PG has all the "classics" already done, and so we-at-DP tend to be working on slightly more unusual books. I'm thinking this might work particularly well for the sci-fi we have going through the site currently, but there's loads of other things that people might well enjoy reading & listening to ...

thistlechick · Post by **thistlechick** » February 18th, 2006, 7:13 am

Also, see Hugh's comments in this recent thread: http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1405

I have a couple of projects that we've just started with the plan to add the text to PG as well...so maybe these would be potential candidates for what you are suggesting ... I've obtained the copyright clearance from PG for these two books:

Pan Tadeusz (in English)
http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1056

American Indian Fairy Tales
http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=947

and have applied for clearance for Chapters from My Autobiography by Mark Twain http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1255

Fox in the Stars · February 18th, 2006, 8:45 am

PG must already like us; I found Librivox by looking on the PG site for information about contributing human-read audio. They referred me here! ^__^

I also scan books for PGDP, so if you all want to be kept abreast of what I'm uploading there, maybe we could work out something to provide Librivox with the page scans for a concurrent audio edition if anyone wants. I could easily contact the project manager at DP and tell them about it.

What I've uploaded so far (all English language, all cleared by PG):

"The Story of a Dark Plot" by ALOC
From the Canadian Temperance/Prohibitionist movement, tells the story of an assault on one of their members and related judicial/political happenings.

"Old Ebenezer" by Opie Read
General Fiction

"While Caroline Was Growing" by Josephine Daskam Bacon
More general fiction, young girl oriented

"A Guide to Modern Cookery" by A. Escoffier
A 900-page gourmet cookbook; this would be quite an ambitious project!

"The Gospel of Luke: An Exposition" by Charles Erdman
Bible commentary, including the biblical text.

"Salads, Sandwiches, and Chafing-Dish Dainties" by Janet McKenzie Hill
Another gourmet cookbook

"Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation" by S. D. Gordon
Religious

"The Son of Monte-Cristo" by "Alexander Dumas" (actually Jules Lermina)
The first of a few "knockoff" Count of Monte-Cristo sequels I got hold of (I am strangely fascinated by them and am on the hunt for more of them, however cheesy they may be), tells the story of the Count's son, Esperance.

And as soon as I double-check the scans, I'll be uploading...
"Edmond Dantes" by "Alexander Dumas" (actually Edmund Flagg this time)
Another Count of Monte-Cristo knockoff by a different author.

(EDIT:) I'm also working on "Macauay's Speeches on Copyright and Lincoln's Address at Cooper Union" as a type-in.

Post by **hugh** » February 18th, 2006, 9:22 am

hi guys,

the PG file has been quiet for a while. I had long long long email exhanges with greg newby CEO & their tech chief (whose name escapes me) back in Jan. everything positive, just no specific workplan just yet.

Bundling files as they go into the system might be a good idea.

Also we've submitted a few texts for copyright clearance, how does the scanning process work?