[bksvol-discuss] Bookshare & PQ submissions

  • From: "Pavi Mehta" <pavim@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2008 14:20:22 -0700

Hi All,

In the light of recent discussions on the list regarding Publisher quality 
submissions we wanted to send an email to all of you to clarify Bookshare's 
position on this.

While volunteers continue to be our primary source of books being put into the 
collection, upgrading books already in the collection continues to be one of 
Bookshare?s primary goals.  Many volunteers have contributed thousands of hours 
in improving books in the collection, and they do a great job!  But publishers 
have resources that allow them to create perfect copies of books. Bookshare 
would like every single book in the collection to be absolutely perfect, and 
this goal actually might be achievable if we can convince publishers to donate 
e-book versions of their books. Many of the Publisher Quality books that we 
receive are in perfect condition, but not quite all at this point, as the 
technology is evolving in the publishing industry. 

We need to encourage publishers to donate their books, since eventually they 
will be donating ONLY perfect books. And wouldn?t that be wonderful? Imagine 
every single book in the collection being perfect! Currently it?s a goal, but 
someday, maybe not too far away, it might be possible to achieve it.
We know that thousands of volunteers have contributed hundreds of thousands of 
hours of effort in putting books into the collection, and we acknowledge that 
the vast majority of our books are in excellent condition.  But upgrading our 
books will always be a primary goal, and to that end, we will replace current 
books with publisher quality books. It is also very important for us to let our 
volunteer community know that this replacement policy is in fact a requirement 
of the contracts that we sign with the publishing houses.

To the extent possible, we will also inform the volunteers of the books that 
publishers will be sending us, so as to not duplicate efforts. With every batch 
of books that publishers send us, there are software changes required in our 
processing of their books, so the books are currently being added to the 
collection in at a fairly slow trickle. But we are pretty optimistic that in 
the near future, the speed of donating books and processing them will increase. 
Our mandate from the US Department of Education is to put 100,000 new books 
into the collection in 5 years. We have no doubt that we will meet that goal, 
especially with all the Publisher Quality books that we are being given by the 
forward-thinking publishers who are so generous with their time, efforts and 
books. Huge thanks to O?Reilly, HarperCollins, Scholastic, and other publishing 
houses and to all of you as we continue to grow the collection as a team. 


Carrie Karnos and Pavi Mehta
Bookshare.org




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