It seems most bloggers are very busy trying to suck money from the internet. If tweaking and promoting of your blog doesn’t eat every last second of your time, consider giving something back. I recently found out about Librivox — an all volunteer project to provide audio of public domain literature. Librivox is the natural audio follow-on to the Gutenberg project, from which all their readings are sourced. It’s funny how I heard about Librivox the same day I just spent the afternoon with a 100% blind person.
In Librivox, you sign up, and decide whether you want to read or edit. If you decide to read, you record and upload mp3 files of your chapters or poems or whatever they’ve got going, and your voice becomes part of the Legacy. They’ve even got collaborative readings of plays. I don’t envy those editors having to slice and dice the individual lines and equalize the background noise and voice levels and so on. There is abundant documentation at Librivox, so I won’t burden you with any more verbiage.
I signed up and figured out how to charge and use my husband’s digital voice recorder. I eventually uploaded my test recording, and the experienced editors there gave me very useful technical suggestions for masking or eliminating fan noise, but I think I’ll just pop the texts up on the laptop so there won’t even be any. Why do an extra step if you don’t have to?
I’ve now got my first assignment, a little old-fashioned nature story for children called “62 tadpoles”. I chose it because I loved to watch tadpoles grow into little brown toads when I was a child. After I’ve done a few easier recordings I’d love to try out for a play.
If you want to volunteer as a reader or editor I believe that Librivox is very worthwhile project.
Here is a Youtube video I found. The video portion is very boring, this might as well have been pure audio. (This is not my voice nor my recording.) This recording clips a little on the sibilants and it probably should have been smoothed out, but we are all volunteers.
Hello Colleen. I am pleased to let you know that “Hot Dorkage” has been reviewed and added to Blogging Women. I want to congratulated you for a job well done with this blog. It’s a pleasure to add another fine quality women’s blog to the directory. Keep up the good work!
That’s great — thanks! I found some great blogs over at Blogging Women. (This is me but I don’t have my admin hat on at the moment)
Colleen, Just wanted to give support to your suggestion of working with Librivox. I’ve been volunteering with them for about a year now. I’ve not done much, because I’ve been working on my masters as well, but it is a great project. If you want to work on the text versions of the books as well, I suggest http://www.pgdp.net. They help to produce many of the books that go into Project Gutenberg. I’ve been working with them for coming on 4 years now and have helped produce many books. Both are great projects and well worth working with!
Jasons last blog post..Reusing the waste: Home Edition
Thanks Jason! BTW I really enjoy your blog. I’ll put it on my auto garden blogroll if it is not already in there. Again, Colleen, not logged in.