Thanks to Mary Robinette Kowal for linking to this. Splendid!

Visit http://wiffiti.com/ to make your own!

Currently, we organise by Category (out of Fiction, Poetry, Non-fiction, Dramatic Works — one per book) and by Genre (list here — multiple selections possible).

However, as our catalogue grows, I think it’s going to get harder and harder to manage this very fixed structure. As we add more books, we’ll need to add more Genres, and it will be a lot of work to retrospectively look over our books when a new Genre is added. For example, Art was recently added to the list, and older books about Art were added to the Genre by people who remembered them. But even with a relatively small number of relevant books involved, some can get missed, like Ruskin’s Lectures on Landscapes. Adding a Genre which would cover a lot of existing books becomes a bit of a nightmare, and there’s little incentive to add new Genres of this type. My point here is definitely not to second-guess the labellers, but to note that it’s going to be very hard to keep using this system when we have 5,000 books. By the time we get to 10,000, we’ll have literally thousands of books in some Genres and it’ll be very hard for listeners to find books that interest them, using the Genre system.

Although we have a lot of extremely altruistic people involved at LibriVox, very few can be recording in the belief that their book will never be downloaded. So I think it encourages readers to have a good catalogue system which makes it easier for listeners to find books they may like. Genres are an important part of this. (I also think some kind of ‘if you liked that, you may enjoy…’ recommendation system will be helpful, but that’s a different discussion. ;)

Also, our current Genres don’t really work for some classic library areas that people often expect to find here, such as Detective Fiction or True Crime. And are autobiographies in Biography or Memoir? How well would a non-native English speaker differentiate Humor and Comedy? (since I struggle myself.) Or Instruction and Advice, for that matter? And would you put a book on learning English into Instruction or Advice, or just Languages? Is the Genre ‘Children’, books about children, or for children? (Books on child-rearing are very different to Mother Goose.) Is Literature of any use at all, since it’s rather “in the eye of the beholder”? Ditto the Genre “Fiction” which ought to be already covered by the Category. We have Epistolary Fiction, but where do we put books of non-fictional letters? What definition of Romance is being used (we do, after all, have a Romance of Rubber in the catalogue!) Are all catalogers using all these terms in consistent ways?

I don’t have a definite answer to any of this — it needs some major discussion! But I think a piece of the puzzle is given an essay by Clay Shirky, who talks about how to sensibly arrange virtual objects, avoiding the perils of real-world organisation. (Hence, some “there is no shelf” musings on Twitter. We might get some support from thinking about the problem in terms of physical library cataloging, but it’s not the whole answer, as we can see from Shirky’s list of popular library system pitfalls.)

I’m wondering about tagging books — having the reader and prooflistener do the initial tagging, which might look a lot like our current genres (or the LoC categories at Gutenberg) and then opening the system up to the general public to tag also (but with the major limitor that no tag appears until it’s been entered a certain number of times by different IP addresses. This would avoid things getting tagged “rubbish narration” or “horrid background noise” or the random like “vote for X” or spam (you don’t need examples of this one.)

Finally, I’d like to chuck into the mix, the representation of other languages. It’s very important to me that a book in a particular language has its catalogue summary in that language (with an English translation if wanted.) It would be lovely to be able to use Genre in one’s own language too. I realise our current hard-skeleton of Genres lends itself to this better than a big flexible system, but anyway. We have an increasing number of books in languages other than English, and encouraging listeners for those languages will result in more readers for those languages.

The classical student has only to contend against other students who are and have been situated very much as he is situated himself. They have learned Latin and Greek from grammars and dictionaries as he is learning them, and the only natural advantages which any of his predecessors may have possessed are superiorities of memory which may be compensated by his greater perseverance, or superiorities of sympathy to which he may “level up” by that acquired and artificial interest which comes from protracted application.

(Part III, Letter VIII of The Intellectual Life by Philip Gilbert Hamerton. archive.org free book link)

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

Via Tom Elliot (whose website seems to be having a funny moment, otherwise I’d link to it.)

From the Youtube description:

Cera Byer, the visionary behind Damage Control Dance Theatre and Shoebox Studio, dances to “Fire and Ice” from Manko Eponymous’ 2008 cd “Kaihealoha.” Original poem by Robert Frost, performed by librivox.org volunteers.

http://piratelibrary.com/library.htm

This is a bit of a hotchpotch at the moment, since contemporary and modern works are mixed, as are fact and fiction, and sea pirates with thieves of other stripes. I’ve simply labelled books according to source. So it will evolve over time, and I hope it proves of use / fun to someone somewhere along the way.

Collections included so far:

Project Gutenberg
LibriVox
The Internet Archive

To come:

Google Books (the public domain ones, anyway)
Other free online sources of piratical text & audio as I find them

I’m signed up to the One-Book-a-Week challenge again, but knowing the pace I normally read at, I’ve had a binge this month on short novels, and am currently have completed 10. Ha!

I also spruced up this website a little, adding actual widgets and Gargle Analytics. I’m not completely happy with them yet, I can feel a little tinkering with the CSS coming on, but still, close enough.

And finally, it was suggested to me that it might be much fun to Wordle the recordings I produce when I announce them here. Which is definitely a plan. I’ve already made the picture for the next (very short) piece I plan to record, which I know will have an audience of about one, assuming I listen to it myself. But perhaps that’s what Posterity is all about. Talking to ourselves and hoping mebbe someone else will want to overhear. We shall see.

* The most common background noise you may hear in my recordings is that of seagulls — their piercing shrieks go straight through double-glazing and my sound-dampener. Luckily for me, I love the sound.

* The modern book I would most like to read is The Hungry Cloud by Tom Ingram. it has cult-status amongst those of us who’ve read it — it is a formidably good fantasy story for older children. Sadly out of print and apparently unheard of by anyone who didn’t read it, I’d still love to meet its author and say thankyou.

* My microphone is a Samson C01U. It was probably the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought in pursuit of a hobby.

* I’ve contributed 293 audio-files to LibriVox, MCed 75 projects past and present, and recorded in 4 languages (mostly briefly and badly, though!) In addition to that, I’ve hosted 15 LV community podcasts.

* I have 3 solos on the go at the moment and am about to start a 4th (but will work on finishing up the others once it’s begun.)

* I like getting feedback. It’s fun knowing who’s listening to what, and which bits they’ve enjoyed or have reservations about.

At this point I’m s’posed to tag on to another six people, but I’m just going to leave it open to anyone who’s not done this meme in a while, and is in the mood … if you-who-are-reading fancy a go, the rules are below, and feel free to drop a comment here with a link to your own post.

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

James Henry (13 December 1798 – 14 July 1876) was an Irish classical scholar and poet.

At its best his poetry has something of the flavour of Robert Browning and Arthur Hugh Clough while at its worst it resembles the doggerel of William McGonagall. His five volumes of verse were all published at his own expense and received no critical attention either during or after his lifetime.

Could be my new favourite poet. The piece I recorded had more of the Browning than the McGonagall, not that McG isn’t very dear to my heart too!

I’d love to go back and work with the echo more, now that I have something of a feel for how it records … but … that’s probably not practical in the near future. This will have to do for the time being, unrehearsed and unedited as it is.

Download audio file (poem_henry_cs.mp3)
(1:33)