We are continually adding content to our broadcast system library.
First, I find things on Librivox.org that look interesting. I have been getting a lot of good short-length pieces from a series of anthologies of short poetry and short stories. And from there I branch out to what sounds interesting to me or I may look up some other works which were performed by a particular volunteer reader.
Each item comes as a zipped collection of .mp3 audio files.
I have a little script which unpacks the zipped collection and then runs the loader program to put all of the .mp3s into our automation system. The script loads everything into a classification called ‘NEW’.
After that I go through and check out each one. I trim the beginning and ending. Most of the items begin with a statement about the Librivox project, so I trim that off. And most have “end of chapter 1”, stuff at the end, and I trim that off. I classify the selection roughly by type (fiction, poetry, biography…) and by it’s time-length. And I try to check the audio level so that it isn’t too loud or too soft.
In some rare cases there will be something about that particular track which makes it difficult to understand. If it is part of a short-piece anthology I put just that track into a different classification to look at later.
We have about 1500 items in the library so far. Most of those are short pieces. Last night I spent a couple of hours and trimmed and classified about a hundred items.
