[bksvol-discuss] Re: Bookshare's Purpose in Your Eyes
- From: "Donna Goodin" <goodindo@xxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 10:00:34 -0400
Hi all,
Well, I maybe stepping in a hornet's nest here, but here goes ...
On an introductory note, my husband is part of a panel that is presenting
a session at the upcoming AHEAD conference next month dealing with blind
access and copyright law. As you can imagine, there's been lots of hot
debate around our dinner table on this topic lately. Though we're still a
ways away from a cease fire, *grin* he does raise one point which I think is
an extremely valid one: are blind people entitled to free books?
It seems to me that Tony's message (ans Sam's presentation) address two
separate issues: first, that of access, and second, that of money. The
access piece is easy. Should we have access to every book ever published?
*ABSOLUTELY!* Should we gain this access without having to spend our
precious time scanning our own books or waste our time duplicating someone
else's scanning effort? *ABSOLUTELY* Does the fact that we are blind/print
disabled entitle us to download 10,000 books for free? I have a harder time
saying yes to that one. I think we've gotten used to being able to do this
because of the way that Web-Braille and Bookshare work, but I'm not sure
it's right. We should also remember that the way libraries work for sighted
readers is that you get your book for a couple of weeks, and then you have
to give it back. In this sense, bookshare is treated like a library but is
effectively a bookstore that someone forgot to lock up when they left for
the night. No, we can't share these books with nonmembers, but I have to
say that many of my sighted friends would love to be able to go in and clean
out Barnes and Noble's shelves for free, and some could make the case that
they can't afford to buy all the books they want to read. Why should I be
able to do this if they can't?
Mind you, my heart isn't overflowing with sympathy for the publishers. They
never cared about our access until we developed the capability to scan
things for ourselves and began sharing our work. Moreover, I would argue
that, if I go into B&N and plunk down my $10-15, I want the same thing that
a sighted reader gets when they buy a paperback. This means that 1. the
text is all clean and pretty and properly formatted (which I know means
different things for different people), 2. the text can be converted it to
grade-2 braille (my personal reading preference) or is usable with readers
such as the Victor Reader, and 3. I want to be able to copy it to other
devices, such as laptops or notetakers so that I can read wherever and
whenever I want. Right now, such a system does not exist, and until it
does, I think the publishing houses have some work to do and i will support
our need to have groups such as Web-Braille and Bookshare. But I do think
that they are not unreasonable in suggesting that we should pay for books
that we intend to keep as our own, just like everybody else does.
Maybe this is a tangent off the original thread, but Tony's message, and the
question of bookstore/library raised these issues for me.
OK, I'm going into hiding now. No e-letter bombs please. *grin*
Best,
Donna
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Baechler" <bookshare@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2004 3:57 AM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Bookshare's Purpose in Your Eyes
> Hello all. I am sure that many others will chime in here, but I have not
> read anyone else's thoughts yet. Personally, I think it should be a
little
> bit of both. In other words, it should be like a bookstore in that it
> should have the latest bestsellers and the like, but it should also be
like
> a library since it should attempt to make every book ever published
> available in an accessible form.
>
> For a long time, I religiously checked Web-Braille. I found ways to
search
> their catalog for books not yet released in hardcopy Braille and that they
> had not announced to the general public. That is until I became a member
> of bookshare.org. I put off joining because I did not want to pay the $50
> plus a $25 setup fee. However, when I checked _Braille Book Review_ for
> May-June 2002 and found almost nothing at all which interested me, I
> decided to join. Even with a limit of 100 books per month, that is only
> pennies per book. This is not as good as being totally free, but I was
now
> able to download about 10,000 books at the time when Web-Braille only had
> about half that many. Also, if I downloaded the DAISY format, I could
> instantly have a plain text copy without running the file through a
Braille
> translator as I did with Web-Braille. The book was in one file instead of
> several volumes. No more did I have to search nine files to find
something
> in a reference book.
>
> Is bookshare.org perfect? Definitely not. I think it would be impossible
> to please everyone. As far as improvements, one thing I would really,
> really like to see is more newspapers and magazines. At least with
> Web-Braille, I can read _PC World_ with everyone else, even if it is a
> couple months behind. The problem I have now is that NLS only ships some
> magazines on cassette. A good example is _Ellery Queen's Mystery
> Magazine_. I beg anyone who has printed issues to please scan them. It
is
> annoying for me to have to listen to a magazine on two four-track
> cassettes. I would much rather read it myself. Hey, I can store it on
> CD-ROM if I want, along with my other thousand books I downloaded. That
is
> very appealing!
>
> Another problem with bookshare.org is the category system and the lack of
> synopses for many titles. Well, that is actually two separate problems,
> but they are somewhat related. The category system problem is minor. I
> would like to be able to get a complete list of all 3,000 books in the
> science fiction category without downloading a bunch of web pages which
> only list 50 at a time. Maybe there is a legal reason for this, but I
> don't see what it is. If you (the staff) are concerned about the general
> public getting the complete book list, set this up only for members or
> something. I do not agree with the idea of splitting the subcategories
> into smaller sub-subcategories. How, for example, do you set apart the
> different types of mysteries. There are espionage stories, private
> detective stories, romances with some suspense, suspenses with some
> romance, etc. I fail to see how anyone can split these off and still be
> fair. I do wish that _Star Trek_ and _Star Wars_ had their own categories
> though.
>
> Regarding the synopsis problem, I wish there was a way that volunteers or
> members could go back and fill in synopses when they are missing or
> incomplete. Yes, folks, people do look at them. I cannot emphasize how
> unhelpful "none" is. As far as combining the long and short into one, I
> say only accept one long synopsis and arbitrarily split it at 200
> characters. If people want to see the part that got cut off, they can
open
> the book information page. This is how most large databases are designed,
> at least based on what I have seen. I again emphasize that a useful
> synopsis is important! This is something that potential members and
> contributors look at.
>
> There is one more issue which needs to be addressed. It is critical that
> volunteers do the best they can. Why? Because I know of at least one
> author who was turned away by what he didn't see. His name is Jack French
> and he recently wrote a book related to old time radio. I know there are
> other blind people here who care about OTR, but since he saw not even one
> scan, he decided that no one would be interested so did not submit a
> digital copy. I have contacted several authors of books about OTR and I
> got a couple interested, but they were worried about piracy. I would
> suggest clearly pointing out links for authors on the home page and doing
> even more to emphasize that piracy is a very small issue because of the
> membership structure. I did get one author of science fiction books to
> donate digital copies of all six books he wrote. They are the Starman
> series. Just look for "Starman" in the title search. My thanks to Mr.
> Jonathan Cooper. He also submitted several scans from his personal
> collection. I am not trying to brag, I am only trying to point out that
> potential authors do look at every book you validate and submit. If there
> are obvious errors, that could be one less author's books you will see
posted.
>
> I would like to mentione one more wonderful thing about bookshare.org in
> closing. Even now with Web-Braille, it could take a year or more to see
> some titles show up. The best example is the latest Harry Potter
> book. Last year, bookshare.org had it the day after it hit the
> streets. NLS took until this year to finally post it and I think it was
in
> 12 or 14 volumes. It is wonderful to actually have books available the
> year they were published. I can now get books on my want list within days
> or weeks of publication, not years. For the first time that I can
> remember, I can now concentrate on getting those older, out of print
> mystery and science fiction titles rather than trying to find something
> from the current decade. It amazes me how long it takes NLS to get even
> the bestsellers distributed.
>
> In closing, that is my opinion of bookshare.org. I think that overall
they
> are a great organization. If I could change one thing, I would say to add
> more magazines. If one thing needs to be improved, I would say the
> synopsis problem. Do you have a favorite author? Does he or she have
> email? Write to them and explain about bookshare.org. About 99% of them
> have never heard of accessibility for the blind and have no clue about
> bookshare.org. They just might work with you. If you want to contact me
> off list, I will send you the email which I have been sending to
> authors. I hope my comments are beneficial to someone.
>
>
>
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