Books on your mp3 player

I came accross a great new site this week that you might find very useful. The link is
http://librivox.org/ and the idea is that you can dowload audio versions of books onto your computer or your mp3 player.

This is a site created by and added to by volunteers and so it is presently free. It is constantly being added to and caters for audiences of children through to adults.

A warning though: there are no new releases here. The reason for this is copyright regulations. These are very important and very complex laws, and make no mistake, the power of the copyright council is great and far reaching.

Each country has their own copyright laws and this site conforms to the American laws, which are slighlty different to ours. In Australia, published works are protected by copyright for 70 years if they are published after the death of the author, or if published during the life of the author (which is more common) the works are proteceted for 70 years after the death of the author.

This site requires that the texts on there were published before 1923, in order to comply with the US copyright laws. However, it is the responsibility of the person dowloading the file to ensure that they are complying with the copyright laws of the country they are it. It is quite possible that an item under copyright in one place is not in another.

With texts this old it is quite simple to check the copyright. For this site, because of the way it is set up, you only really need to check the date that the author died. If they died before 1955, you are safe to dowload it. If not, it gets a bit more complicated. I have checked about 20 of the more popular authors, and the only one I found that did not comply was C.S. Lewis.

I have probably made it all sound very difficult, but it is not as bad as it sounds. This is a great resource and I would encourage everyone to check it out. There are some classics on here which you may never otherwise read and this is a fantastic way to experience them.

I would be more than happy to check up on the copyright of anything on the site if you just let me know.

I would love to read some comments from anyone who does give this site a go and would like to let us know what they thought of it.

TC

Living books

Did anyone see Denton this week? I didn't either, but this week's show has certainly set people talking.

Andrew Denton introduced Australia to the concept of living books. Living books are the newest thing to hit libraries in Europe. The theory is the library signs up various people who become the living books, which library users can then borrow for 45 minutes at a time. The idea behind it is that people can find out more about particular groups of people by borrowing a living book and chatting to them. Some of the examples of living books have so far been Muslims, homosexuals, animal activists, a gypsy and a journalist.

Andrew then spoke to a living book, a transexual, and one of the library users who borrowed her. The borrower was a mother whose daughter had decieded she was transexual and so she was able to find out more about what this decision whould mean for her daughter and what she could do to support her daughter in that choice.

Let me know what you think of the idea and what sort of living book you might like to borrow and why.

TC