MEDIA ALERT! ALL HANDS ON DECK!!!

Post by **hugh** » January 14th, 2006, 2:56 pm

Hi folks, there is *supposed* to be an article about LibriVox in the LA Times this sunday (jan 15 - biz/technoloplis section, i believe).

I have no idea what kind of traffic increase this will generate, but the wired.com article and the NPR radio spot both increased traffic by a factor of 10. So it's possible that we'll get a deluge of newbies trying to figure things out.

So I just wanted to let everyone know, and if you're a veteran LibriVoxer, helping out answering questions etc would be MUCH appreciated.

of course, nothing may happen, you never know. but better to be prepared.

Rev. Steve · Post by **Rev. Steve** » January 14th, 2006, 9:49 pm

Does that mean I have to behave myself and be less caustic?

kayray · Post by **kayray** » January 14th, 2006, 10:03 pm

Well, maybe for a day or two ;-)

What we'll really need are lots of welcomers, question answerers, and traffic cops. That's what we needed last time we got media coverage, anyway... We want everyone to have a personal greeting, if possible, and we'll need to dissuade enthusiastic newbies from starting to record Harry Potter, Narnia, and Lord of the Rings.

Watch, now that we've warned you all we'll only get, like, 3 new members!

RobertG · Post by **RobertG** » January 14th, 2006, 10:42 pm

kayray wrote:Watch, now that we've warned you all we'll only get, like, 3 new members!

...and losing one member: me! But only for a week!! I'm heading down to Santa Ana for a conference and, though I'm portable, it's going to be one of those marathon-into-the-night glad-handing deals.

By the time I get back next weekend, this place will probably have doubled in size! The rate this place is going, we'll have everything read by summer!

alexfoster · Post by **alexfoster** » January 15th, 2006, 4:05 am

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-technopolis15jan15,1,2703253.column?coll=la-headlines-business

Bringing You Books on Podcast
# Amateur readers are working together to record novels and other texts to be downloaded free from the Internet.

Kara Shallenberg records audio books ? most recently the Frances Hodgson Burnett classic "A Little Princess" ? that can be downloaded from the Internet.

A stay-at-home mom in Oceanside, she is not a professional reader, let alone one of the highly regarded actors such as Jim Dale, Ruby Dee and Michael York who have infused audio books with compelling, nuanced performances.

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But Shallenberg's recordings are free, unlike the professionally done audio books, which can cost $20 to $50 to download.

Shallenberg is one of a rapidly growing number of volunteers who are making recordings of public-domain books that can be copied from the Internet at no cost.

Free books read by amateurs are among the latest uses of podcasting, whereby recordings are easily made on computers and sent out over the Internet for downloading to other computers and portable players.

The most prominent site for the free book downloads, http://www.librivox.org , debuted in August. LibriVox has 15 unabridged novels available, including Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island," Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Notes From the Underground," Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," P.G. Wodehouse's "Smith in the City" and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein."

Also available are readings of short stories, poems and documents such as the U.S. Constitution. The all-volunteer site also lists more than 100 works in progress.

LibriVox is the brainchild of Hugh McGuire, an unpublished novelist in Montreal. He was listening to a commercial recording of D.H. Lawrence's novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover" when he came up with the idea of using the Internet's wide reach to record and distribute books.

Key to his plan was a way to get books recorded efficiently. As a former engineer, McGuire, 31, was familiar with the concept of freely circulated, open-source software that a number of people could work on simultaneously. "My idea was that a book could be divided so that a number of people around the world could work on it, each one recording a chapter," McGuire said.

The first project was "The Secret Agent," Joseph Conrad's 1907 tale of a spy who infiltrates an anarchist group in London. Although fairly short as novels go, it has more than 91,000 words. McGuire divided its 13 chapters among himself and 11 readers he met through literary and other websites.

"If it had been done by one reader it could take weeks," he said. "This way, it takes just days."

Word of LibriVox spread quickly ? the site now has about 200 active volunteer readers, many of whom also work as organizers to put books together. The readers, none of whom McGuire has met, live in North America, several European countries, Australia and Japan.

They record their assigned texts directly onto their computers using commonly available recording and editing software and then send them to an organizer, who uploads them in a package onto the site.

Some organizers take on the task themselves, recording an entire book as a solo project. It takes longer, but the result is a smoother product, without listeners having to adapt to new readers throughout a work. Shallenberg's "A Little Princess," which is also posted to her own kayray.org site, falls into that camp.

Users of the site can choose to download an entire book or just chapters. And for each selection there is a link to the text on Project Gutenberg, which has collected more than 17,000 books and other public-domain selections on its site, http://www.gutenberg.org . With printouts in hand, you or your kids can follow along if you like.

How good are the readings? Varied, to say the least. Some are quite good, even excellent. Alex Foster of Nottingham in Britain has such a sonorous voice and gives such vibrant, classy readings that it sounds as if he came right out of a BBC studio.

On the other end of the scale are readings that sound as if they come from your worst nightmare of community theater ? either monotone or way over the top.

Still, McGuire said all were welcome. "Early on, we decided we were not going to make any value judgments about a person's reading," he said. "We get them through the technical problems and that's it."

All the recordings I heard on the site could be understood, at least. And many of them, if amateurish, got by on the strength of the texts. You can get caught up in a story, even if the reader is not a member of SAG.

After all, if your were lucky enough to be read to as a kid, it probably was not by a pro. But did it keep you from asking for just one more chapter of "Treasure Island" before falling asleep?

alexfoster · Post by **alexfoster** » January 15th, 2006, 4:06 am

Can you see what I like about the article? :D

Post by **hugh** » January 15th, 2006, 6:09 am

oooh. well-done everybody. i wonder if he was talking about my recordings - the monotonous ... out of his worst nightmare...

well, just for the record, i have yet to hear a LV chapter I did not like (except mine).

h.

scartol · Post by **scartol** » January 15th, 2006, 6:43 am

alexfoster wrote:Can you see what I like about the article?

Certainly not the typo in the last paragraph, I hope. =)

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » January 15th, 2006, 6:46 am

Alex, i know, you like that Kara is famous now.

Post by **hugh** » January 15th, 2006, 6:52 am

i think there was even a photo of kara in the print version - any californians - can we see a scan??

kayray · Post by **kayray** » January 15th, 2006, 11:16 am

Wow, what a great article! The reporter really seemed to understand what we're all about. Alex, you're officially "Mister Sonorous" :)

Yes, the print article has a beautiful photo of me!

http://kayray.org/gallery/jan06/LA_Times

Post by **hugh** » January 15th, 2006, 11:22 am

sweet!!

thistlechick · Post by **thistlechick** » January 15th, 2006, 11:36 am

oh... that's an adorable picture Kara =)

This is so very exciting! =)

LibraryLady · Post by **LibraryLady** » January 15th, 2006, 11:38 am

Wonderful article, beautiful picture! It's exciting to be in print media for the first time; I'm curious if it will bring in more listeners rather than more readers.

ChipDoc · Post by **ChipDoc** » January 15th, 2006, 2:32 pm

Oh how very cool! Sure hope LiberVox.org doesn't go down from the crush of new folks who find their way here because of that article! Nice to see something like that. Perhaps I should seed it to my own newspaper...