LibriVox Offers Free Audio Book Downloads

Hugh McGuire’s goal is to make all public domain (expired copyright) books available free online in audio format. He’s created LibriVox to reach that goal, and it is a terrific open source, public domain project.

Volunteers suggest public domain books and record chapters. Finished books are cataloged and podcasted

LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain, and then we release the audio files back onto the net (podcast and catalog). Our objective is to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet. We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project.

I think this is a terrific project, and the content will be very welcome on my long drive back to the bay area this week from Seattle. I also plan to volunteer and read chapters (I promise not to sneak in plugs for TechCrunch either).

Check out examples such as Jack London’s Call of the Wild and Charles Dickens’ The Christmas Carol.

Jon Gordon has an interview with the founder. Thanks for the tip Dave.