Is it only the problem of mine? All others sites open OK in my IE.

Thanks in advance for any recommendation.

I was going to post a response on your forum, but discovered I couldn’t get on since I’m not a member. And I thought I would defer for now, at least until I become more of a listener than a reader. I’m going to blog a bit over the next couple of days on some of the issues that you and your fellow librivoxians raise in the forum. Especially the following questions/themes: Are people who read a book and people who listen to one being read experiencing the same “work of literature,” something you seem to suggest in your earlier comments, and something several of the respondents on your forum state explicitly? What is the relationship between amateurism, professionalism, and evaluation in cultural work pursued online, such as that done by a place like Librivox? Finally, is there a potential conflict between the mission to be a library and the desire to be a community of readers/listeners, the one a form of public service and resource with forms of responsibility outside itself, the other serving its own internal purposes regardless of connections to others.

(I actually may not get around to blogging on this since it seems more internal to Librivox itself, and since I’m not part of the group it’s not really my business what Librivox wants to be….In any case, I was struck by your sense that Librivox serves as a kind of library. On the other hand, I keep finding myself wishing it would be MORE of a library so that it would be more of a public service. One thing libraries always do is serve as initial points of evaluation and categorization, ordering and directing reading experiences in particular ways–even if only in saying, these things are worth purchasing and putting on our shelves, but really much beyond that. Librivox doesn’t really want to go that way–which is perfectly fine since by definition it can do what it wants in this regard. But because it doesn’t want to do some of that work, it becomes much less useful than a library for someone like me who is a casual patron. It’s more like a repository or a vault. When I ask, “what readers are really worth my time to listen to, and what books translate well from written to spoken form,” I feel a bit as if I’m being told “Oh, they are all equally wonderful, plunge on in.”

Would that there were time. Because of this I end up dabbling here and there and if I’m lucky I run across someone I think can really read, who is reading a book that works well in spoken form.

Nothing wrong with that, but it does limit to accident what is otherwise an enjoyable experience for me as someone who’s not likely to be a deep user of Librivox.

In any case, I hope you’ll pass on my thanks to the other folks on your forum. Their thinking–and passion!–has been very helpful. And please feel free to come back and carry on these disputations if you’d like. As I say, I’m probably going to post a couple of things over the next couple of days on these general issues, if not about Librivox specifically.

Feb 18, 2:54 AM — [ Edit | Delete | Unapprove | Approve | Spam ] —