I agree. What is stopping a volunteer from coming up with a one or two
sentence brief description? There also seem to be a lot of submissions
with no long or short descriptions at all. How can you scan a book and
know absolutely nothing about it? Please take a moment and come up with a
short description at the very least. Usually you can find enough from the
scanned book jacket info to do this even if you have no intention of
reading the book.
While on my rant "romance" is not a short dexcription I find
satisfactory. I even have trouble with "historical romance". I do like
"historical romance set in eighteenth century America" as an example. I
similarly dislike "science fiction" as a description. Surely a little more
info can be gleaned from somewhere by the submitter!!!
E.
At 09:27 AM 4/28/2004, you wrote:
In spite of the repeated please from several of us, I keep finding glib or useless short synopsis in recent submissions. Quite frankly I do not understand which part of the word USEFUL some volunteers have a problem comprehending.
In particular, in today's fresh crop of glib contributions I see
The Golden Cup by Delva Plain,
anonymously submitted by a "Bookshare Volunteer", whose short synopsis proudly states: Fiction by best-selling author.
Another title,
Holding Out by Ann O'Falk
was submitted by 'Louise' and bears the totally useless short description: "see long synopsis".
In both cases, a meaningful long description is available for these books. Is there any reason why a shorter version of these descriptions was not inserted in the short description field? Book submitters should ensure that their own submissions include meaning ful short descriptions. Reviewers should catch omitted or meaningless short descriptions and repair them appropriately.
Ultimately please remember that we volunteers are performing a service for our customers, who deserve the best fruit of our efforts.
I must conclude with a recommendation to the Bookshare staff that all further reviewed/approved books containing trivial short descriptions be routinely rejected by the administrator.
Thank you for listening,
Guido
Guido D. Corona IBM Accessibility Center, Austin Tx. IBM Research, Phone: (512) 838-9735 Email: guidoc@xxxxxxxxxxx
Visit my weekly Accessibility WebLog at: http://www-3.ibm.com/able/weblog/corona_weblog.html
