Wednesday, October 31, 2007

LibriVox Hits *1000*

Today was the day. We've done it. With courage, daring, greatness, a microphone, and a will! We are LibriVox and So Can You. This is the official press release written by the organizations founder: Hugh McGuire:

LibriVox, the free audio book project has just cataloged it's 1,000th book: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," by Edgar Allan Poe (read by Reynard T. Fox).

LibriVox.org started in August 2005 with a simple objective: "to make all public domain books available as free audio books." Thirteen people collaborated to make the first recording, Joseph Conrad's "Secret Agent."

Two years later, LibriVox has become the most prolific audiobook publisher in the world - we are now putting out 60-70 books a month, we have a catalog of 1,000 works, which represents a little over 6 months of *continuous* audio; we have some 1,500 volunteers who have contributed audio to the project; and a catalog that includes Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," "Moby Dick," Darwin's "Origin of the Species," "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Einstein's "Relativity: The Special and General Theory," Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," and other less well-known gems such as "Romance of Rubber" edited by John Martin. We have recordings in 21 languages, and about half of our recordings are solo efforts by one reader, while the other half are collaborations among many readers.

We are always looking for new volunteers! Come join us.


Please visit us!! We love you all and happy kilo!

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Monday, October 1, 2007

SFP #3 Continued

Recent research demands that I reopen the books on this song. I was getting ready to record this for LibriVox and was unable to find a single original source file, meaning a scan of the original printings. The best I could do was to get something that might be a PD text from civilwarpoetry.org. 1
I did, however, find original scans of a song entitled "Two Little Sailor Boys". This was published in 1906 with lyrics by Edward Madden (the same fellow who wrote the lyrics for "Two Little Boys") and music by Dolly Jordon. Surprisingly, or maybe you'd already guessed, "Two Little Sailor Boys" has the same tune as "Two Little Boys". An odd coincidence or something else?2

1http://www.civilwarpoetry.org/FAQ/twoboys.html
2http://levy-test.dkc.jhu.edu/levy-cgi/display.cgi?id=150.085.000;pages=4;range=0-3