This e-book space project is a direct outcome of the Global Voices Innovation Award launched in January 2012 and aimed at supporting “innovative ideas coming from our community members that could advance the mission of Global Voices.” We were looking for “visionary ideas that have the potential to change the way we work…that help us to understand our community, our impact, and how we engage the world”.

Up to the end of May 2012, GV has published almost 80,000 original posts only on its English website, plus many more thousand on each localized version. Those archives are an important historical and cultural treasure that deserves broader dissemination, in order to advance GV mission and further enrich the current media-sphere. Therefore, the GV e-book project plans to assemble and produce electronic books, dossier and topic publications in a variety of formats (pdf, html, epub, mobipocket, etc.), DRM-free and under a Creative Content license, containing a collection of our best archive material with ad-hoc introduction, updates, discussions, etc. In time we can build a unique catalog focused on citizen and social media content that could attract new people interested in sharing their multimedia content (videos, pics, audio, etc.) on our platform and also promoting partnerships with any kind of media outlets, non-profit organizations and other entities. This project will also provide new opportunities for the GV community to get involved at various levels (selecting, translating, re-organize posts; helping in e-book design & production, etc.) and further enhance the way we currently work.

Even if initially based on Global Voices content, this project is not limited to that community: everybody is welcome to join and get involved! Here you can subscribe to our dedicated mailing list.

Global Voices is a community of more than 500 bloggers and translators around the world who work together to bring you reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media. The idea for the project grew out of an international bloggers’ meeting held at Harvard in December 2004 and it began as a simple blog. Each day our post are translated into more than 30 languages by volunteer translators, who have formed the Lingua project. Additionally, our Advocacy website/network helps people speak out online in places where their voices are censored. We also have an outreach project, Rising Voices, to help marginalized communities use citizen media to be heard, with an emphasis on the developing world.

Design credits

Book symbol by Charles Riccardi, from The Noun Project.