#22 Audiobooks (or "The end is in sight ")

HAHAHA. Oh you have to do this.

I listened to the start of David Copperfield done by some computer voice. It's rather funny. Click on cprfd001.mp3. It contains the contents of the book. For example; ''Tommy rattles, ex ex vee eye eye" hehehe.

I think that computer-generated voices will need a bit more work. Without tones, the book sounds ridiculous and boringly read. Good audiobooks are read by good readers. Compare the above against Briar Rose read by a human. Her voice and tones aren't fantastic, but at least she knows where and how long to pause.

Anyways, this activity was supposed to be about audiobooks. I think it's a very good idea for them to be online (maybe not in my library's area where home computer usage is very low, but in general they are a fantastic idea). In fact, I've mentioned LibriVox before. LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Unfortunately the files are not streamed like those from Project Gutenberg and I had to download individual chapters to my computer...but it's still free!

I think these would be great in the catalogue. If I could (somehow) link the 505 Contents note to the actual chapters of each of these e-books, I'd love it. I'm listening to Three Hundred Tang Poems, Volume 1 in Chinese. It's recorded in Mandarin and Hokkien, with some chapters in Taiwanese or Cantonese. I wish I could do it...hmmm...nope, not easily I can't. Bugger.

Daily book installments via rss

Okay, I just got excited. Whilst looking at rss stuff, I stumbled across DailyLit, a site that sends installments of books to you via rss or email. It's really cool! I am now getting Alice's Adventures in Wonderland sent to my rss feed reader daily. I can read a chapter a day! Hmm, 9 books of the bible there and no Qu'ran. Ah well.

Also, I found a free online audiobook service where volunteers read out-of-copyright text into a microphone and then it is made available. LibriVox is the name of the site. I'm considering volunteering...not because my voice is anything special, just because I am quite keen for mass digitising of audiobooks to take place. Although I'm having trouble listening to any of them...it may be due to our firewall at work though...I'll have to try from home.

Lucky last link, Fokus Deutsches - an online video instruction series for learning German. Exciting! There's a few languages there actually, all European though (I guess learning to speak tonal languages wouldn't be so easy online!)