Misc Q&As

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Here is a list of questions people have asked, and answers given. These are taken from the Need help? Got Advice? forum.

Help downloading files

Q: Archive.org is blocked/times out, and I can't access the files.

A: Many of our files are also hosted by Gutenberg.org. You might also want to try accessing the files through a proxy.

Questions regarding volunteering

Can volunteering be credited?

Q: I must complete a certain number of hours of community service for school or by court appointment. Will time be credited if I volunteer for LibriVox?

A: It depends. We get a number of requests about people using us for school, university or community service volunteering hours, court ordered community service or other types of service projects. While we welcome all readers, you would need to discuss this with whomever is organizing or approving your community service hours to determine the criteria the organization you're volunteering for must fulfill, as there are a number of things that may make it not suitable. It is possible that you may only do community service for registered non-profit organizations. Librivox is not a registered charity. We operate independently as a project of the Internet Archive. The majority of our volunteers do this as a hobby for fun.

We are totally web based and are unable to sign any paperwork - we have no office, no staff and no way to record or verify how many total hours you have spent volunteering. The only record you will have is the length of any finished recordings which will be available on a personal reader page once any projects you contribute to are cataloged. Your catalogue page, which will list every project you've participated in, and the sections you worked on will only provide the time for each cataloged section -- but only for the length of the file itself; there's no way to account for time spent in setting up, editing, proof-listening or any other non-speaking part of the process. Our experience is that for a ready to catalog 1 hour of recording, it can take you about 3-4 hours to record, edit and produce a finished recording, depending on the difficulty of the text and the amount of editing required. The organization assigning your community volunteer hours will have to institute its own procedures for accepting/verifying LibriVox volunteer time without any participation on our end.

If under these conditions you would still like to volunteer, or if you decide to do it some time for fun, just register for our forums and we'll give you what help you need to get started.

Help with the Forum

Forum topics not being marked as read

Q: When browsing into a topic, then going back to the forum via navigation links (not the BACK button), the topic is still being marked "Unread".

A: Try deleting your cookies and see if it helps.

Log on problems

Q: After entering my correct user name and password to log on, these appear to be accepted. However, I find that I am not logged on when the main forum screen opens.

A: Delete your Librivox cookies, close and then restart your browser.

Posts not showing up

Q: When posting in the forum, the post's contents aren't showing up; a blank post gets posted, but clicking "Edit" shows that the text is there.

A: Make sure there is no broken BBCode, especially with links. If you post a link surrounded with [url] tags, like so: [url]httpLinkToSomeplace [/url], make sure that the link isn't broken, and that there are no spaces in the link, or remove the space before the [/url] tag. You could also remove the [url] tags altogether, as just posting a link will make it show up as active, even without the [url] tags.

Help with the Catalog

Changing Catalog info

Q: I want to change my catalog Name/URL.

A: You may do so by asking any Admin. Please note that the changes will not necessarily change your information on various apps, YouTube, etc., since we do not know how often these 3rd parties refresh their data.

Help with Audacity

Problem selecting wave

Q: When I try to select part of the audio, I can only select in blocks of 1 seconds; I can't select anything under 1 second.

A: Make sure to uncheck the Snap to box at the bottom of the Audacity window.

Problem with sampling rate

Q: My track has the wrong sampling rate, and when I try to change it, my voice sounds funny.

A: The rate should be 44100Hz. Use the drop-down menu at the bottom right corner of the Audacity window ("Project Rate (Hz)") to change the sampling rate. It shouldn't affect how your voice sounds. You can also re-sample a track without changing the speed or pitch by selecting Tracks | Resample and entering 44,100 as the new sample rate.