Jackie, are you working with Kurzweil? It can quickly tell you a book's accuracy. . . . and in general, if you think the book is not good enough for human consumption, it usually is because it isn't. If you have no Kurzweil, you can still check through bookshare the quality of the book. Try to upload it temporarily -- i suggest the unedited original. On the validation panel, the Bookshare system will report the accuracy of the book. If the system reports more than 0.7% of words not to be in the dictionary, the book is not 'excellent. If more than 1.4% of words are not in the dictionary, the book is not even 'good'. If you found the book to be 'exceelent' or 'good', just close Internet Explorer to cancel the validation transaction and continue with your editing. If the book falls significantly into the 'fair' region, . . . . well, you know, I am totally heartless and would simply proceed with a rejection and so would nuke it without a second thought. G. Guido Dante Corona IBM Research, Human Ability & Accessibility Center, (HA&AC) Austin Tx. Phone: 512. 838. 9735. Email: guidoc@xxxxxxxxxxx Web: http://www.ibm.com/able ". . . Maybe it was only those who were most certain they were right who were guaranteed to be wrong. And that maybe, just maybe, those who questioned the most were in the end those who came closest to being wise." [David Poyer, The Command] "Jackie McBride" <abletec@xxxxxxxxx> Sent by: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 01/14/2008 05:36 PM Please respond to bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx cc Subject [bksvol-discuss] Re: An alternative to validating fair quality submissions I'll tell yall what, folks--I am absolutely utterly & profoundly astounded at how much cleaning up of this book I'm doing that was rated frickin excellent on step 1! Somehow it just does not seem quite right-- oodles & oodles ofspurious characters, quite a few letters messed up, & I'm rather suspecting even some missing pages, though it's hard to prove cuz the numbers jive but not the text. Another quarter per hour project. Or less--Lol! & I'll tell yall what some more--if I paid for a membership & downloaded this book in the condition it's in now, I would be sooo royally torked! So even those books w/excellent ratings--'taint necessarily so. Bookshare really needs to get a prevalidating tool up & running. Or maybe it's just that I'm a perfectionist & I need to quit worrying about it, do the minimum, & throw it back up w/all the garbage intact. I somehow just cannot bring myself to do it. I really think a prevalidating tool & refusal to accept books (at least for credit) that aren't good (or maybe even excellent) quality would be a real start. As it is now, q&d validators & scanners get credits quickly (so long as the stuff isn't rejected) while those who are careful about their work struggle to get theirs. On 1/14/08, Allison Hilliker <bookshare_girl@xxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > If one does follow Donna's suggestion of submitting excellent copies of fair > quality books on the step one page, I have one request. Please submit your > excellent copy to the step one page before rejecting the fair quality scan. > I say this because I know of scanners who reject books because they say they > will submit a better scan, and then they don't do it. > > Just my thoughts, > > Allison > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Donna Smith" <donnafsmith@xxxxxxxxxxx> > To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2008 8:22 AM > Subject: [bksvol-discuss] An alternative to validating fair quality > submissions > > > > Hi all. > > > > > > > > I apologize in advance if this suggestion ruffles feathers, but it is made > > in the spirit of getting excellent quality books into the collection. > > > > > > > > I am one of the volunteers who believes that "validating" a book shouldn't > > involve rewriting it because the scan is poor. There are some books which > > have strange formatting or difficult tables and charts or other things > > that > > typically don't scan well and the only way to get such books into the > > collection is in fact for a very patient validator to go through the whole > > book and fix problematic errors that a rescan won't fix. > > > > > > > > However, there are a lot of books on the step one download page that are > > just straightforward text, fiction or nonfiction, that should scan with no > > problems, but are rated as fair. In my opinion, it is a waste of > > volunteer > > time and effort to have a validator make these scans passable. > > > > > > > > So here's my alternative. If I, or any other scanner, obtains a copy of a > > book that is currently awaiting validation and rated fair, would it be > > appropriate for us to download the fair copy, reject it, and then upload a > > better scan of the same book? > > > > > > > > Thoughts? Ideas? No rotten tomatoes please! > > > > > > > > Donna > > > > > > To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to > bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of > available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line. > > -- Jackie McBride Please join my fight against breast cancer <http://teamacs.acsevents.org/site/TR?px=1790196&pg=personal&fr_id=3489> & Check out my homepage at: www.abletec.serverheaven.net To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.