BC Readiness Quiz

Introduction

Many people on LibriVox want to become a BC for a group project. But beware, BC'ing is much more involved than managing your own solo, or just reading a few sections here and there. How much more involved? Well, essentially you are dealing with a lot of people (often newbies) that may all have little problems... Your job as a BC is to make the project run smoothly, to help people fix their problems, and to try to get the project finished within the deadline. You think you are ready? Take the quiz below - how many questions can you answer?

The Quiz

So, your project has found an MC and is now in Readers Wanted, the following things happen:

1. A reader claims he has uploaded a file, but doesn't include the link. What do you do?

2. The file name for chapter 4 is wrong. What do you do?

3. Miss New has just recorded a 45 minute section, with all wrong tech specs. How do you find that out? Which ones can be fixed even now, and which ones require the recording to be redone from scratch?

4. The file for chapter 29 is too loud/too silent/has too much noisecleaning. How do you find that out and what do you do to fix that?

5. Chapter 19 is clipping badly. What does that mean and what do you do to fix that?

6. The reader for chapter 12 reports that there are pages missing or unreadable in the link you provided. Where do you find another text?

7. Mr. New, with his very first post on the forum claims half of your project. What do you do?

8. A reader finishes editing a section. However, there are still some things left that leave it on the verge of being unusable. You'd like her to change them but know that she is unwilling to make further changes in general. What do you do?

9. A reader has claimed chapters 31-35, but you haven't heard from her since. What do you do?

10. The reader for the last unfinished chapter keeps on promising 'tomorrow' or 'next week'. He has his three other sections completed, but that was a while ago. What do you do?

11. All the files are recorded, but your DPL has disappeared, and you can't get hold of her. What do you do?

12. The DPL has pointed out several mistakes in chapter 18. Some of those are omissions, others need to be fixed because they change the meaning of the text. You haven't heard of the reader at all ever since he submitted the file. What do you do?

13. You find out that the reader of chapter 5 has inserted his own comments to the text. What do you do?

14. The reader for chapter 10 obviously hated reading the section, she switches from bored to aggressive, which makes for very unpleasant listening. What do you do?

Done!

How many questions could you answer? Of course, some of the answers - especially those dealing with people - are different depending on the circumstances. However, you should still have some idea of how to respond - in a LibriVoxy manner of course - in all cases.

All the above are real issues that have come up in some project or other; many other questions arise from new readers who are not yet familiar with our procedures. This is why we ask having more experience with LV before anyone starts BC'ing group projects. This can be a solo to figure out the magic window; this can be a number of readings in a group project so that you know how experienced people organize their projects and learn from watching, so to speak; or this can be from experience in PL'ing (ideally DPL'ing) since not all BC's also record.

In answer to the questions above: only for two you must resort to the MC, three more require some assistance because of our policies, but all the others are your responsibility, and are nothing an MC should be bothered with. Note that most MC's keep a careful watch over their projects in any case, so they know when things are starting to catch fire, but you are the one who has to fight it.

Have a look at these two pages on how to be an efficient BC:

Tips for Book Coordinators and Kmerline's 'Shepherding' Tips