27 February 2010

Jewel in the Open Content Crown Needs Help

Far too few people know about LibriVox:

LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books.

Think about that: turning all public domain books into free audio books. That would be a wonderful resource, and not just for the visually impaired, for whom it is a tremendous boon.

But as is often the case, this fine project is put together by volunteers, with no funding, and that's now a problem:

For four-and-a-half years, LibriVox volunteers have been making audiobooks for the world to enjoy, and giving them away for free. We’ve made thousands of free audiobooks that have been downloaded by millions of people; our site gets 400,000 visitors every month. To date, all our costs have been borne by a few individuals, with some generous donations from partners. However, these costs have become too big.

All they need is $20,000 - a paltry sum for such an incomparably rich holding. Please use the "Donate Now" button on their site to give to them so that they can continue to give to us immeasurably more.

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4 comments:

  1. Do they have any corporate structure, a charity umbrella body of any sort, or is it still run out of the founder's pocket? The former would make it easier to convince people to donate.

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  2. Looks like the Internet Archive are handling the donations on their behalf:

    http://librivox.org/2010/02/24/librivox-needs-your-help/

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  3. We have reached our goal in less than two weeks, and the appeal is now over. Thank you for your support. :)

    RuthieG

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  4. @Ruth: excellent news - thanks for letting me know.

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