Jim Nuttall's books are extremely easy to validate. They are about interesting topics too. As for the imbalance in our volunteers, no one said we can't advertise or post somewhere to recruit volunteers. In fact, if you ask John or Lisa, I'll bet they'd say yes to a politely worded post about us seeking volunteers to help with proofreading scans. Jamie, Grandma Cindy, and our other sighted volunteers might know of some ways to reach into the sighted world for volunteers in a way we haven't thought of. I'm willing to do some posting to help bring in new volunteers. Does anyone have any suggestions for where we should try posting? Part of my background is in marketing and writing for publicity for companies.
As someone who both submits and validates books, I can tell you about three reasons why many of us who own scanning equipment tend to submit more than validate. My goal is to explain rather than defend these reasons. One is that we often submit books that we are actively reading... for work, school, or pleasure. Since we're scanning them for ourselves anyway, we go ahead an submit them. Second, it's an easier job to proofread a book that you have the print copy for. You can easily just rescan a page if needed. So submitting books we're proofreading for ourselves anyway is easier than working on the same book as a validater without a print copy to use for page replacement. Finally, I have literally piles and piles and drawers full of books to work through. I would like to see the top of my desk some time soon, and that means scanning my books and then finding them a new home. I'm determined to scan 300 books by the last day of 2008, a goal I started working on last month.
For the time being, I validate around five books a month and scan around 25. I validate while scanning since I can listen to the book while my hands are busy scanning. Since 25 books a month would weigh down the step 1 page, I only submit 1 or 2 at a time and wait for them to be approved before putting another book up. Another volunteer has told me that I should just upload my books as I finish them, letting people take the books that interest them. Yet I worry that by posting my books, I will slow down the approval process for someone else's books. I suspect I am not alone in this and that there are other volunteers who have a treasure trove of books on their hard drives. Because of this, it would be great if we could find more volunteers who either do not own scanners or who are sighted and don't have the dynamic of needing to scan a book for personal use just to be able to access the content. These people could be a big help in getting books validated, letting those of us who can scan focus on that.
Monica Willyard To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
