Online audio books

What do these all have in common?

• Short Story Collection. Vol 031 by Various
• Napoleon of Notting Hill, The by Chesterton, G. K.
• Word Is Dead, A by Dickinson, Emily
• Thirty-nine Steps, The by Buchan, John
• How I Found Livingstone by Stanley, Henry Morton, Sir
• Long Poems Collection 006 by Various
• American Politician, An by Crawford, Francis Marion
• Fulco de Minstreel by Kieviet, Cornelis Johannes
• Child-life in Art by Hurll, Estelle M.
• Motor Girls , The by Penrose, Margaret

They are the new releases on Librivox, which champions "the acoustical liberation of books in the public domain". LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Their goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books.

I'm currently listening to the 8 short stories that make up RAFFLES THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN by E. W. Hornung.

The Amateur Cracksman is the first collection of stories about A. J. Raffles, gentleman, cricketer, and thief. After stopping his old school friend, Bunny Manders, from a desperate attempt at suicide, Raffles introduces the unsuspecting Bunny to a new way of earning a living, burglary. Though frequently horrified by Raffles’s actions, the conscience-stricken Bunny stands by him through all their adventures, firm to his promise, “When you want me, I’m your man!” (Summary by Kristin Hughes)

I was able to download the 8 mp3 files to my computer, and then burn to a set of CDs (hopefully that does not break any sort of copyright) so I can listen to them to and from work in the car. Kristin Hughes appears to be the reader of all 8 stories. The recording is a bit over 5 hours.

Librivox say they are always looking for volunteer readers.

They have a number of different types of projects:

• collaborative: many volunteers contribute chapters of a long text
• solo: one volunteer reads an entire book
• short works (prose and poetry): short works and poetry!
• dramatic works: “actors” record parts, all edited together.
• other languages: projects in languages other than English.
  

Practically, here is how things work:

1. a book coordinator posts a book in the Readers Wanted Section.
2. volunteers “claim” chapters to read.
3. the readers record their chapters in digital format.
4. the book coordinator collects all the files of all the chapters.
5. the book coordinator sends the collected files to a meta coordinator.
6. we check the files for technical problems in the Listeners Wanted section.
7. the book coordinator sends the collected, corrected files to a meta coordinator..
8. another public domain audiobook is made available for free.