In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• "Reading" the Public Domain:Narrating and Listening to Librivox Audiobooks
• Millicent Weber (bio)

Introduction

The twenty-first-century publishing industry has seen a boom in audio listening, with audiobooks enjoying an unprecedented market share. Despite this, minimal empirical research has been undertaken to substantiate or evaluate assumptions about audiobooks' growth and popularity. Situated at the nexus of audiobook publishing and digital co-creation, Librivox, which facilitates volunteers to create and share public domain audiobooks, is likewise massively popular, with the Internet Archive versions of its recordings collectively accessed more than one billion times. Moreover, as a wholly online community, its site and forums act as a living archive of the way that these recordings are produced and received. Recognising these unique features, this article aims to use analysis of Librivox to reveal dynamics of an important publishing industry growth sector, and a persistently idealistic digital community.

Grounded in publishing studies, itself a field with multiple disciplinary orientations,¹ and acknowledging this dual purpose, this article will bring a multidisciplinary perspective to bear on understanding Librivox. This conceptualisation crystallises in section 3 as a "digital publishing collective"—a term I propose to describe the often-overlooked online communities characterised by produsage-like² intervention in secondary and tertiary cultural industries (such as publishing or the GLAM sector).³ Digital publishing collectives preserve many of the qualities characteristic of early, idealised forms of online interaction because of their overarching, unified missions—that is, the determined expansion of access to the public domain—and equally because of how their communities promote interactions grounded in grateful reciprocity. Contextualising these enterprises' efforts in relation to creative industries as labour markets also highlights the potential effects of their reliance [End Page 209] on voluntary labour alongside their persistent attachment to literary value. In other words, understanding Librivox as a digital publishing collective foregrounds the site's media specificity and industry contexts, and both are returned to at the end of this article in light of audience understandings of the project's value. Ultimately, analysing Librivox as a digital publishing collective, and through this exploring in conjunction its site mechanics, its catalogue, its community, and its audience, reveals practices of publication and reception that characterise these distinct new industry spaces, while simultaneously offering insights into the production and consumption of "old" media.

An Introduction to Librivox

Librivox (https://librivox.org/) is a repository of public domain audiobooks. Founded in 2005 by Hugh McGuire, it began as a group of friends each reading aloud and recording a chapter of Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent, and developed into a crowdsource-model repository where volunteers upload homemade audio recordings of out-of-copyright literature. As of 22 January 2019, it consisted of 12,502 catalogued works—novels, plays, and poetry, many with multiple recordings associated—and had 9,038 registered volunteer narrators.⁴ In recent years, the publishing industry has seen drastically increased audiobook listening across the board, connected to the growing popularity of podcasts and podcasting, another form of grassroots cultural production. In 2017, book retailers reported that audiobook sales were for the first time worth 1 percent of the market share, with an estimated 108 million units sold in the US that year.⁵ Librivox audio recordings have collectively been accessed over 950,000,000 times: amateur material produced by sites like Librivox compare surprisingly well with professionally published audiobooks for circulation, a situation which is particularly significant given the industry dominance, otherwise, of platform-controlling giants like Amazon.⁶

Media studies has a strong interest in evolving forms of the public sphere and public domain;⁷ however, the slightly old-fashioned cross-media nature of bookish communities like Librivox and Project Gutenberg means they have not yet received sustained attention despite their potential influence.⁸ Indeed, book publishing is both the oldest of the creative industries, and one often overlooked in studies of digital media and communications technologies. Occupying a liminal space between tradition and innovation, these communities demonstrate a persistent attachment to old media, books, and [End Page 210] the literary canon, and disrupt traditional models of participation in the publishing industry through adopting new media. For a range of reasons, "contemporary print media and print...

中文翻译：

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“阅读”公共领域：叙述和收听Librivox有声读物

代替摘要，这里是内容的简要摘录：

• “阅读”公共领域：叙述和收听Librivox有声读物
• Millicent Weber（生物）

介绍

二十一世纪的出版业见证了音频收听的蓬勃发展，有声读物占据了前所未有的市场份额。尽管如此，仍进行了最少的经验研究来证实或评估关于有声读物的增长和普及的假设。Librivox位于有声读物出版和数字共同创作的纽带，它方便志愿者创建和共享公共领域的有声读物，同样受到广泛欢迎，其记录的Internet存档版本总计被访问了十亿多次。此外，作为一个完全在线的社区，其站点和论坛充当了这些录音的制作和接收方式的实时档案。认识到这些独特的功能，

立足于出版研究本身就是一个具有多个学科方向的领域，¹并认识到这一双重目的，本文将为理解Librivox带来多学科的视角。在第3节这概念化结晶为“数字出版集体” -所述术语我提出来形容经常被忽视的特点是在线社区produsage样²在二级和三级文化产业（如出版或GLAM部门）的干预。³数字出版集体保留了早期理想化形式的在线互动的许多特质，这是因为它们的总体使命是统一的，即确定地扩展了对公共领域的访问权限，并且同样是因为其社区如何促进基于感恩的互动互惠。将这些企业在创意产业方面的努力与劳动力市场相关联的背景信息也凸显了其依赖的潜在影响[End Page 209]自愿劳动，以及他们对文学价值的持续执着。换句话说，将Librivox理解为数字出版集体将使站点的媒体特性和行业背景成为现实，并且根据受众对项目价值的理解，将两者在本文结尾处进行介绍。最终，将Librivox作为一个数字出版集团进行分析，并通过结合其站点机制，目录，社区和受众的探索，揭示了这些独特的新行业空间所特有的出版和接受实践，同时提供了对生产和消费“旧”媒体。

Librivox简介

Librivox（https://librivox.org/）是公共领域有声读物的存储库。它由休·麦奎尔（Hugh McGuire）于2005年创立，最初是由一群朋友大声朗读并录制约瑟夫·康拉德（Joseph Conrad）的《秘密特工》（Secret Agent）的一章开始的，后来发展成为一个众包模型存储库，志愿者可以在其中上传自制的无版权文献的录音。截止到2019年1月22日，它包括12,502种编目作品，包括小说，戏剧和诗歌，其中许多都与多张唱片相关联，并且有9,038名注册志愿者叙述者。⁴近年来，出版业看到有声读物的收听量急剧增加，这与播客和播客（草根文化生产的另一种形式）的日益普及联系在一起。2017年，书籍零售商报告说，有声读物的销售额首次占了市场份额的1％，当年在美国估计售出了1.08亿本。⁵ Librivox音频记录已被总共访问了950,000,000次：Librivox之类的网站制作的业余资料与专业发行的有声读物相比，具有出人意料的佳绩，这在流通行业中尤为明显，考虑到行业主导地位，尤其是像Amazon之类的平台控制巨头。⁶

媒体研究对公共领域和公共领域不断发展的形式产生了浓厚的兴趣。⁷然而，像Librivox和Project Gutenberg这样的书店社区的老式跨媒体性质意味着它们尽管具有潜在的影响力，但尚未受到持续关注。⁸实际上，书籍出版既是最古老的创意产业，也是数字媒体和通信技术研究中经常被忽视的一种。这些社区占据了传统与创新之间的界限，对旧媒体，书籍和旧书有了持久的依恋。[结束页210]文学经典，并通过采用新媒体来破坏传统的出版业参与模式。由于多种原因，“当代打印介质和打印...