[bksvol-discuss] Re: Are volunteers really that important anymore?

Great set of ponderings Roger, and everyone else.

A few thoughts off the top of my head:
One area where I see volunteers continuing to be invaluable: out of print books. Publishers aren't providing them, and millions upon millions of them are only in printed form besides, not in an electronic proof that the publisher can provide to bookshare. Scads of titles of books are printed each year and then disappear, when you take into account the small presses. Most books published have one or two printings at most. I see those kinds of books continuing to be added into the collection by volunteers who want to read something other than the hottest new bestsellers.
A second area: the outsourcers, because of the grants, are focusing on children and young adult books, from what I see. That leaves everything else for the rest of us (excluding textbooks, of course, which frankly I'd rather see bookshare inhouse and outsourcers handle as they are a pain in the butt).
Third, genres such as science fiction, gay and lesbian, erotica, etc. The books I see getting added to the collection in these categories are still primarily from volunteers. 

Judy s.

Rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx wrote:
If I had a stack of those gay and lesbian books on hand I can imagine that I might send them off to Bookshare and I might be out the postage and the cost of the books if I had bought them, but I would also be out many hours of volunteer labor to get them into the collection. I am not particularly interested in children's picture books, so I have not downloaded any, but I would think that outsourcers could handle them. I think that Pavi, in fact, said that the more difficult books have priority for being outsourced. The main thing I have noticed, though, is that the proportion of books added to the collection by means other than volunteers is now considerably greater than the proportion added by volunteers and that proportion is growing. Also, a good many books already in the collection by means of volunteers are being replaced by other means. Furthermore, the proportion that are being added by volunteers could , in most cases, be done faster and just as easily or more easily, by those other means. No one has mentioned it. In fact, the Bookshare staff is proceeding away with more and more innovations for volunteers. What I was really wondering is whether volunteering is becoming obsolete and nobody has noticed it. 

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