Hi, Max. Each book is only available to the person who has downloaded and is validating it. As for end notes and such, I find those difficult to validate and usually don't go over them with a fine-toothed comb. The abbreviations and notations tend to scan with slightly less accuracy than the main text of the book.
I take it from some of your signatures that you are a programmer? I mention this because with Bookshare validations one has to accept some level of ambiguity at times. Both our technology and the Bookshare system itself have quirks that contribute to this. Our volunteers have widely varying levels of computer experience, types of technology with which they scan and validate, and have very different approaches to how they do submissions and validations. There is also a subtle dynamic between Braille and speech users because what is readable to a speech user may look awful to someone using a Braille display because they can see every extra space, tab, and stray characters. A book I might consider quite readable and in excellent shape could be seen by Sue, for example, as of only good or fair quality. Bookshare has quality control guidelines, but they are far more flexible and subjective than what you'd find in programming. For all of these reasons we seem to live with a certain level of ambiguity and find a way to make it work well. I hope this is making sense and will explain some of the things you run into as you volunteer here. If this doesn't make sense, kindly ignore it and blame it on the cold medicine I took. (smile)
Monica Willyard At 01:19 PM 4/14/2007, you wrote:
The other ongoing problem is that the footnote numbering scheme features numbers out of sequence, and they're often attached to the period at the end of a sentence. A simple matter to insert a space and leave the number in the clear; but if someone were relying on those endnotes, which are all at the back of the book, for formal citation, there could be problems. Thanks for all the great feedback, and I've renewed for another week. BTW, when a book file is in this status, can another member download it as well, or is it kind of sequestered? uess the jury's still out on that one.
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