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Listen to millions of free books, read aloud by robot voices

audiobooks

Listen to millions of free books, read aloud by robot voices by your browser

How to run

$ git clone https://github.com/ArchiveLabs/audiobooks.git
$ cd audiobooks
$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer
Windows

defaults to http://localhost:8000

> git clone https://github.com/ArchiveLabs/audiobooks.git
> cd audiobooks
> python -m http.server

How it works

Consider adventuresofbobw00burg - The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (public domain)

Step 1:

  • fetch the manifest (the book structural metdata) from our APIs: https://api.archivelab.org/books/adventuresofbobw00burg/ia_manifest

Step 2:

  • Identify the 1st page from the manifest, i.e. the field titleIndex (from Step 1)

Step 3:

  • Retrieve the plaintext for this page.In this case, our metadata itself is imperfect, which is why we should use AI or mechanical turk to determine the 1st page. The actual 1st page of the book content should be leaf 34: https://api.archivelab.org/books/adventuresofbobw00burg/pages/34/plaintext

Step 4:

  • Create a initial query string from the book's ocaid and the page (leaf) number to start from

  • Append to the locally served url, example:

    http://localhost:8000/?ocaid=adventuresofbobw00burg&page=34

  • Press 'Play' to have the browser synthesize this text to speech

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