Librivox

I started out looking at the recently cataloged selections, and listened to the first "chapter" of an Edgar Allan Poe poem. It was read by a woman with a British accent and a very pleasant voice.

Then I used the search function of the catalog to see if there was anything by Mark Twain. Searching for Clemens, Samuel I found The Tragedy of Puddin'head Wilson. The first chapter was read by a man with a rather irritating delivery. I sampled a few of the other chapters since I had read that different volunteers might read different chapters, but apparently in the case of this book, the same guy read the whole book. Oh well, maybe I would get used to it if I stuck with it.

The fact that all the books are public domain of course means that even though there are a lot of titles, it is limited in selection to primarily (if not exclusively) older books. Still, it is something we can refer patrons to who are looking for downloadable audio books.

I have been looking at Overdrive for our library (Temple Public), but the cost is prohibitive for a single library. However, if we could get enough of us interested, they are willing to let us work together to split the cost. If anyone is interested in doing this, let me know.