LibriVox

LibriVox is a hope, an experiment, and a question: can the net harness a bunch of volunteers to help bring books in the public domain to life through podcasting?

LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain, and then we release the audio files back onto the net (podcast, catalog, and bit torrent). We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project.

We get most of our texts from from Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, or through other sources of scanned texts showing the publication date may be used. The Internet Archive hosts our audio files and website.

The LibriVox Objective

Our objective is to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet.

Fundamental Principles

We have five core values, which help guide us in achieving our objective:

1. Librivox is a non-commercial, non-profit and ad-free project
2. Librivox donates its recordings to the public domain
3. Librivox is powered by volunteers
4. Librivox maintains a loose and open structure
5. Librivox welcomes all volunteers from across the globe

Brief History

• August 10, 2005 - LibriVox created, by Hugh McGuire, on blogsome.com
• August 11, 2005 - first book selected, and fully subscribed: Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad. Readers include: Hugh McGuire, Neal Foley, Fling93, Branko Collin, Greg Schwartz, Lloyd Davis, Mitchell Dwyer, Michèle Pacey, Gina, Mark Bradford, Derek Elliot, Paula Berinstein
• September 12, 2005 - LibriVox posted on Boing Boing
• September 15, 2005 - librivox.org domain name registered
• September 26, 2005 - LibriVox Forums began with 6 books in progress: Frankenstein, Call of the Wild, Psmith in the City, Notes from the Underground, The Secret Agent, and The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
• October 25, 2005 - LibriVox invited by the Internet Archive to attend launch of the Open Library, where LibriVox presents An International Episode, by Henry James.
• November 16, 2005 - The Validator (LibriVox MC file upload tool) first becomes available.
• January 8, 2006 - The "Proof-Listening" forum is opened.
• August 7, 2006 - The Importance of Being Earnest is LibriVox's first audio-play completed and cataloged.
• January 4, 2007 - The new LibriVox catalog/search engine is made public.
• April 23, 2007 - LibriVox reaches 1000 readers.
• October 10, 2008 - The LibriVox catalogue totals a full year (8760 hours) of audio.
• December 31, 2008 - LibriVox releases its 2000th audiobook. The event is announced in this post.
• February 17, 2009 - LibriVox releases its 1000th solo audiobook.
• July 2009 - LibriVox releases its 2500th audiobook. The event is announced in this thread.
• December 2009 - LibriVox begins to implement dynamic catalogue pages.
• December 26, 2009 - LibriVox releases its 3000th audiobook: The Red Planet, by William John Locke.
• February 4, 2010 - The LibriVox catalogue totals 2 years (17520 hours) of audio, after having catalogued The Brothers Karamazov.
• February 24, 2010 - LibriVox launches its first fundraising drive. The goal is to raise $20K, to cover expenses for the next couple of years. It was announced in this blog post.
• March 09, 2010 - LibriVox's first fundraising is closed, after raising $23K. The event was announced in this post.
• April 25, 2010 - The "Thank a reader" function is launched on the LibriVox Wiki, to allow listeners to email appreciative messages for particular readers for admins to pass along. Now housed here
• August 10, 2010 - LibriVox celebrates its 5th anniversary and starts the special anniversary collections (any short work with 5 in the title, in any language). The tradition of anniversary collections has continued every year since. Celebrated here.
• August 10, 2011 - LibriVox celebrates a 6th anniversary, celebrated here
• April 2012 - LibriVox receives a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that allows it to hire developers to overhaul the catalogue database and other behind-the-scenes LibriVox tools.
• August 10, 2012 - LibriVox turns 7.
• November 28, 2012 - LibriVox sites are taken down for a few days as everything is moved from Syntenic servers to Internet Archive servers.
• March 7, 2013 - LibriVox servers are taken down for major upgrades (as a result of the Mellon grant).
• August 10, 2013 - LibriVox turns 8, with more than 5000 volunteer readers and close to 7000 completed audiobooks.
• September 6, 2013 - A new LibriVox website design is unveiled (which the website still retains)
• August 10, 2014 - LibriVox turns 9.
• August 10, 2015 - LibriVox turns 10, celebrated with a double helping of staff picks (here).
• August 8, 2016 - Two days before the 11th anniversary, LibriVox has 10,000 recordings in the catalogue, including 5,556 solos and 1,349 non-English recordings, celebrated here.
• August 10, 2017 - LibriVox turns 12.
• January 4, 2018 - The LibriVox forums get an updated look with some new features and different functionality, discussed here.
• May 18, 2018 - Volunteer plaidsicle (Amelia Chesley) successfully defends her dissertation about LibriVox for Purdue University’s Rhetoric and Composition graduate program. (This timeline is extracted from Appendix A.)
• August 10, 2018 - LibriVox turns 13.
• February 14, 2019 - Volunteer BengtW joins LibriVox and on March 1, starts contributing statistics to our LibriVox monthly statistics forum from the "official" YouTube page that he maintains.
• August 10, 2019 - LibriVox turns 14.
• August 10, 2020 - LibriVox turns 15.
• September 19, 2020 - Members start holding Zoom get-togethers to discuss LibriVox related matters (and to just chat). Session recordings for four years of Zoom meetings are linked here.
• February 14, 2021 - LibriVox reaches 15,000 recordings.
• August 10, 2021 - LibriVox turns 16.
• August 10, 2022 - LibriVox turns 17.
• August 10, 2023 - LibriVox turns 18.
• August 10, 2024 - LibriVox turns 19.
• December 17, 2024 - LibriVox reaches 20,000 recordings.
• August 10, 2025 - LibriVox turns 20.