Librivox: Listening to the Classics

If you are a student of English, you know how much time you spend reading books. But, if you’re into finding ways to be more productive, or if you like being read to, you should definitely look into librivox. Librivox is an online organization, founded by Hugh McGuire in 2005, that works to get audio copies of texts that have drifted into the public domain, which actually comprise a large part of an English major’s reading list. Librivox has audio copies of books like Moby Dick, Frankenstein, and even Robinson Crusoe. In fact, the online audio library has over 1000 titles in their collection and it continues to grow as volunteers record more of them. Their tagline is “acoustical liberation of books in the public domain,” which is precisely what Librivox does. They use volunteers to conduct a majority of their work and obtain most of their texts from the similar free literature project, Project Gutenberg, which offers text versions of public domain texts. They accept donations, but the best part is that the works that they offer to the public are free! They remain non-commercial, non-profit, and ad-free and their goal is, “To make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet.”

On their Frequently Asked Questions page, the answer to “Why are you doing this? What's in it for you?” is a good one. They write:
“We love reading, love books, love literature, think the public domain should be defended and enriched, we like free stuff, we like to hear people read to us, and we like reading to other people. It's fun, it's a great community, it's a rewarding public service to the world. And ‘nothing’ is in it for us, except the satisfaction of participating in a wonderful project.”

Imagine, doing your laundry and finishing the novel for next week’s class don’t have to be two separate chores any more, that is, as long as you have an iPod or similar device. Admittedly, usually an English student can read a novel much faster than he or she is able to listen to one, but for our modern, busy lifestyles, a student can always accomplish a little bit more work by doing two things at once. If the productivity side of the project doesn’t sell you, consider these texts as being open to people who wouldn’t read these works otherwise, like the blind community, or even folks who just don’t like to read that much at all. In any case, Librivox has a lot to offer and is breaking open new opportunities in the digital world for the literati. On your next break, try downloading and listening to a book that you’ve always wanted to read—but never had the time to. What can it hurt? It’s free.