[bksvol-discuss] Re: 550 books in the download queue
- From: "Susan Lumpkin" <slumpkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 19:33:03 -0500
Agree 100%!
-----Original Message-----
.From: "Rui Cabral"<rui@xxxxxxxx>
.Sent: 8/9/04 7:11:30 PM
.To: "bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"<bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
.Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: 550 books in the download queue
.
.550 books in the download queueHi Jesse:
.I couldn't agree with you more in that we need to get the # of books in queue
down to a more manageable level.
.
.However where we part company is on text quality.
.
.Here is a portion of a message i submitted back in April entitled **Text
quality**
.
.In my experience, anything marked fair is usually almost unreadable.
. We as a bookshare community need to put the emphasis squarely on text
quality, proper pagination, etc.
.
.Otherwise the collection may grow but the membership will not.
.
.Less members=less funding for all of those site improvements that everyone
wants. Over time when the improvements don't materialize more members will not
renew there subscriptions, which in turn means even less funding.
.All of this can be traced right back to the text quality issue.
.
.Bookshare is supposed to be an E-library of sorts. Would you expect to go to
your local library and borrow a book with pages missing, pages where lines ran
together, etc.
.Of course not, if you found such a book, you would bring it to the front desk
and (in most cases) they would likely take it out of circulation.
.
.Reading is supposed to be enjoyable, people do it as a hobby, to relax, etc.
.It becomes outright drudgery when you have to "interpret" your book instead of
reading it.
.
.-- End of prior post.
.
.It would be much more beneficial to Bookshare to have 20,000 quality
submitions then let's say 25 or 30 thousand marginal ones.
.
.People should not be spending too much time on vallidation, if a book is in
that bad of shape, it should without question be rejected, the time would be
better spent rescanning the book.
.Reason being, even with hours of maticulous cleanup, a fresh scan will usually
beat out a badly scanned book that has been cleaned up in terms of quality.
.
.Anyone who reads a book with speech, and to a larger extent Braille, knows how
important "quality control" is.
.
.Thank you.
.
. ----- Original Message -----
. From: Jesse Fahnestock
. To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
. Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 4:49 PM
. Subject: [bksvol-discuss] 550 books in the download queue
.
.
. As someone just pointed out, we have lots and lots of books awaiting
validation. More than we ever have. Certainly, that's a good thing: it reflects
the growth of the volunteer community and the high number of submissions we're
receiving. Unfortunately, it also means that many books are spending a long,
long time in the validation process before making it to Bookshare.org: It's not
at all unusual for submitted books to take 3-4 months to make their appearance
on Bookshare.org right now.
.
. One of the reasons we started this project was to help make books available
in a more timely fashion -- we were all too aware of how the intensive
recording process slowed the release of so many books on audio tape, and we
believed that a sharing-based website would allow people to access bestsellers
and new releases (among other kinds of books) very quickly. Bookshare.org has
been hugely successful in doing just that, though over the last half-year,
we've hit some delays. I think we can overcome them and get back to quicker
turnarounds on submitted books.
.
. Back in March the delay was on the administrative end -- we had more than
600 books awaiting administrative approval. But in the end we knuckled down and
cleared out the backlog, and now the administrative queue is lean again. I
wonder if we can't do the same thing with this validation backlog. We have the
resources -- there are more active Bookshare.org volunteers than ever before --
and the problem is not unmanageable.
.
. What will it take to get that number down from 550 to, say, 150? I'm not
sure. I'd love to hear your suggestions. But one suggestion that I'd like to
make is one I've made many times before: be careful not to allow attention to
detail to overwhelm your volunteering efforts. While I have been truly
impressed by the quality control of this volunteer group, and believe that
raising the quality of the books on Bookshare.org is perhaps the most important
collection goal we have right now, I don't believe we have to sacrifice timely
publication of submissions while aiming for a higher quality standard.
.
. I'd encourage everyone to be judicious about where you spend your
proofreading time. If you download a book for validation that is in excellent
condition, with few major errors, I encourage you to perform the essential
validation tasks and not to pore over every word of text. Remember that the
next book may really need your tender loving care!
.
. Remember that these are the only steps you are required to take as a
validator:
.
. 1. Check that the book is not already on Bookshare.org, or if it is, that it
is being submitted as a superior replacement or transcribed Braille copy.
. 2. Check that the book is not an eBook acquired under proprietary agreement
(e.g. a commercial eBook, a book from WebBraille, etc.)
. 3. Make sure that the copyright name and date are included.
. 4. Make sure that the title and author are included somewhere in the book.
. 5. Make sure the book is not missing multiple pages of core content.
. 6. Make sure the book is readable.
.
. Please don't hesitate to give the better-quality submissions a close
inspection on these points and either approve or reject accordingly, and lavish
your editorial attention on the scans that really need them!
.
. Thanks for considering this suggestion. I think we can get this backlog down
and start the approvals flowing again. Please don't hesitate to make other
suggestions for how the volunteer community can tackle this challenge!
.
. jesse.
.
.
.
.
.
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