Volunteering For Readers

The National Endowment for the Arts study, Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, released July 8, 2004 found that literary readers are more likely to volunteer than those who do not read. If this is true, volunteer opportunities which include reading, books, and spreading an appreciation of literature should really appeal! There are many out there - some of the jobs volunteers do include proofreading eBooks, procuring eligible paper books, burning CDs and DVDs for people without Internet access, scanning and typing, and reading books for audio versions.

There are several opportunities out there for readers to assist in making books accessible to all. The Internet has spawned several non-profit projects which put public domain books online. Perhaps the best known is Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971. Today, approximately 3 million ebooks are downloaded from the site each month.

Related to this... be a book buyer! If you love old books, pick some up at sales, make sure they are in the public domain, and convert them! When Project Gutenburg first started they were interested in those titles which would most likely receive great use - the Austins and Brontes. Now, with these more popular titles transcribed and listed, attention is being focused on more obscure texts, reference books, and less well known children's books. Now, if a volunteer is interested in a specific but not well known book, it can be done and used on the site, as long as public domain status can be established.

Another interesting site which requests volunteers is Sacred-texts.com, the largest free access repository of public domain and copyrighted but redistributable electronic texts on Religion, Mythology, Folklore and the Esoteric. One of the advantages to doing this type of work is that completing a transcription is nearly the equivalent of a college-level seminar on the subject.

Distributed Proofreaders provides a way to help with the conversion of books into e-books through proofreading the electronic versions. Volunteers proofread individual pages. You can do as many or as few as you like, at your own pace. If you like, you can manage whole projects.

Audio books get attention as well, to the great enjoyment of the visually impaired and long commuters! LibriVox, whose goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books, has volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain. They are then added to the catalog for all to use off the Internet. You don't need any experience with recording or audio engineering or acting or public speaking. All you need is a computer, some free recording software, and your own voice.

Are you more ambitious? You can create original ebooks with your text and illustrations or your version of public domain books with the WDS Talking book system. If you volunteer to produce public domain TD-books, you will receive a free license for the necessary program(s) and free technical support.

With these opportunities, you can turn your reading time into a good deed and pass along the enjoyment of books to the entire world!