Virtual Volunteerism: Review of LibriVox and VolunteerMatch (review)

As a writing teacher who values service-learning pedagogies and digital literacy, I have often wondered about the possibility of combining the two. On the one hand, the prospect of assigning virtual service-learning eliminates the complications of organizing transportation and finding a time for service that fits the students’ and community partners’ schedules—practical concerns that have been explored in early scholarship on service-learning (Adler-Kassner, Crooks, and Watters; Cushman; Deans; Mathieu). On the other hand, oftentimes the most transformative aspects of service-learning are powerful because students serve local communities in person (Bacon; Goldblatt; Flower; Higgins, Long, and Flower; Long; Parks). However, as Jeffrey T. Grabill claims, community literacy practitioners interested in writing for community action and change “must understand the technologically mediated places where people invent new knowledge” (7). As we consider the ways in which technologies may intersect with our own and our students’ volunteer projects, we must acknowledge the complexities of digital and online spaces—the places where citizens must be able to “access, assemble, and analyze” information to be able to participate in “decision-making processes that affect their lives and communities” (Grabill 8).¹ The following review examines two websites that complicate the local and face-to-face components of community literacy work by presenting online service opportunities that are not necessarily connected to physical communities. LibriVox and VolunteerMatch have the potential to enhance and redefine community literacy in a virtual environment, but they also call us to critique the rhetoric surrounding virtual volunteering and to be mindful of the quality of online community experiences.

LibriVox (http://librivox.org/)

LibriVox is a nonprofit, noncommercial site that seeks to make books in the public domain (e.g., those published prior to 1923) available for free audio download on the Internet. Following the discourse of nonprofit organizations, the site frames its work in terms of “volunteering” and “donating.” Specifically, LibriVox’s mission involves two efforts: (1) recruiting readers to volunteer their time, technology, and literacy skills to read aloud and audio record books in the public domain, and (2) donating these recorded readings to online listeners in a searchable and downloadable format. With readers of Community Literacy Journal in mind, I review how the site works and how its two purposes—as a site for listeners and a site for volunteer readers—might be of interest for faculty, student, and/or community volunteer projects.

As a site for listeners, LibriVox’s catalog of online readings offers a valuable resource for use in the community. Listeners can choose from a range of genres and types of texts; some popular downloads from the site include Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Brazilian Cat,” Albert Einstein’s Relativity: The Special and General Theory, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The catalog provides basic options to search texts by title and author, as well as more advanced options to search by language or reader’s name or to simply browse “new releases.” Texts available for download on LibriVox could be used in a number of capacities within community literacy projects, including working with children learning to read, adults studying for their GED, or immigrants learning English. Additionally, some texts are offered in multiple languages, providing yet another alternative for use in the community. In my own experiences with the Literacy Volunteers of Tucson, I could imagine using LibriVox to help speakers of other languages learn English by asking them to listen and then respond to poems or short stories as a means of honing their comprehension skills.

However, community literacy projects such as this would require users—volunteers and/or the populations served—to have computer literacy skills and access to technology. Many community literacy projects face challenges with access to and usability of technologies (Grabill). Because of this, LibriVox may be problematic for volunteers and community users alike. Users wishing to listen to readings must be able to subscribe to weekly podcasts, download a zip file of a text, or download a text using the...