Volunteer Guidelines
The Marxists Internet Archive currently has a small collection of Audiobooks which have been produced by volunteers, and we welcome new contributions to the collection.
Audiobooks are generally subject to the same copyright restrictions as the printed text. Further, in order to be published on marxists.org the texts must conform to our Charter. Note particularly that only “authors who are dead or no longer politically active, with material written by the authors themselves and biographical material” may be published. Consequently we strongly request that either:
Before beginning work on an audiobook, the volunteer must contact the Admin. Ctee. with the proposal to ensure that the project fits within the Charter and to avoid a volunteer wasting effort on a document which cannot be published.
If the project is agreed, the volunteer is asked to provide a short audio sample of them reading the text so that we can confirm that the volunteer has a suitably clear voice.
The volunteer is responsible for the production of the audiobook, and the technical specifications are as follows:
Stumbles and slips of the tongue are almost inevitable. For all but the most trivial reading mistakes it is recommended that the reader read the sentence again and then edit out the error afterwards.
In the case of typographical errors in the text, the reader should make the correction in reading and ideally make a note of the error and correct the text. Like any transcription, the completed document should be proofed and corrected.
The Marxists Internet Archive does not have a fixed position on whether a document should be produced in separate chapters or read into a single file, as the internet can handle very large files nowadays. However an ideal maximum file size is around 8,000 words or about 60Mb.
At the beginning of each audiobook, the reader must record: the title and author of the text, “read by .. as published on Marxists Internet Archive.” Each file must begin with the title and “read by ...”