I don’t know how many of you remember my Mormon Texts Project, but it’s coming along well and is in good hands.

Today I’ve got a new (but similar) project to propose: the Mormon Audiobooks Project, making old public domain Mormon books available for free in audiobook format.

It makes the most sense to do this through LibriVox, an already-established platform for free audiobooks (the equivalent of Project Gutenberg). They have a good process in place that includes book coordination and quality control. Volunteers would sign up through their system and record however many chapters they feel like doing.

It also makes sense to use the Mormon Texts Project catalog as a base. That way the source books are available to all volunteers.

These obviously would not be professionally produced audiobooks, but a free audiobook is almost always better than no audiobook. (For some of the books there are already commercial audiobooks by professional voiceover artists, of course.)

The hitch with all of this: I…don’t really listen to audiobooks. Usually they put me to sleep, and if they don’t, I get distracted after about sixty seconds and miss big chunks of the text. (The same things happen when anyone reads to me in person.)

So, I’m probably not the best person to run this. I think it’s important, and I’m willing to help with process and moving things along, but it really needs someone who loves audiobooks at the head of it. If you think you could be that person, let me know.

Also, if any of you are interested in the project, either as listeners or volunteers, leave a comment or let me know.

Update: I’ve put up a page for the project with volunteering instructions.