[bksvol-discuss] Re: Bookshare's Purpose in Your Eyes
- From: "Donna Goodin" <goodindo@xxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 09:52:29 -0400
Hi Tony,
I completely agree with what you say about quality and I have made that
argument with my husband. At the point that we are paying for books, our
copy needs to be every bit as error-free as the hardcopy. I doubt that
Bookshare could ever do this - I know that I don't have that much time to
spend on cleaning up books. The solution is that the publishers should
provide text (or some other flexible format) copies to us electronically.
That way they get their money, and we don't have to scan.
I do see a difference with PG, and it is the one that you pointed out.
There's a big difference between downloading a public domain book, which, as
you say is available to everyone, and a book that is not in the public
domain. Bookshare also makes this distinction, folks nonmembers can
download pubdomain books, but not others titles. If a book is free to all,
than I don't see an issue. But that doesn't change things for copyrighted
materials.
Cheers,
Donna
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Baechler" <bookshare@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 1:29 AM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Bookshare's Purpose in Your Eyes
> Hi. I agree with Donna on general principles, but likewise I think there
> is something she might be overlooking. Yes, we can get unlimited access
to
> books with bookshare.org, provided that they have been scanned. However,
> as she points out, they are not all nicely formatted. For my money, I
> would like complete synopses, perfect quality, the ability to convert to
> plain text rather than trying to convert the DAISY files, etc. However, I
> would expect to pay for each book, just as Donna says. You can go to
ebook
> sites and get all this information whether you are blind or not. No, you
> do not get plain text, but there are ways to convert from pdf and other
> formats.
>
> However, as I am writing this, I am thinking of something. See my earlier
> post on Project Gutenberg. Whether you are blind, sited, a child or
adult,
> you can get over 12,500 free ebooks from Project Gutenberg. There are no
> restrictions at all. Most of them are in the public domain. Almost all
of
> them are free of scanning errors and would make great Braille
> translations. If you want to give them away, go ahead. Is this so
> wrong? They have been giving away ebooks for the last 30 plus years. The
> only real difference between them and bookshare.org is that with
> bookshare.org you pay for the books but you get access to current
> bestsellers. PG only offers public domain books, so the cutoff
publication
> date is 1922. The other difference is that members submit scans to
> bookshare.org, but volunteers submit scans to PG. PG has a site called
> Distributed Proofreaders (distributedproofreaders.net) which does the
> cleaning up of the scans. Three cheers for PG!
>
> I didn't mean to make this a big plug for PG, but I think there are fewer
> differences than Donna might think as far as the blind getting unlimited
> free books. One would equally have to ask whether PG is a library or
> bookstore. If you haven't looked at them lately, check them out. If you
> have an RSS reader, you can get new book lists as well. You can also join
> mailing lists for weekly or daily reports. They are averaging about 10
per
> day for new postings. Donna, you might point out the above to your
husband.
>
>
>
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