[bksvol-discuss] Re: Proposing the Creation of a Validation Starter Kit

  • From: Monica Willyard <rhyami@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 23:59:48 -0400

I like this idea with two small modifications. One is that I think this kind of kit is great but might be overwhelming to a brand-new volunteer, particularly our less tech-savvy users. Making it available as a download for volunteers and letting them know in the welcome message new volunteers get that it's available when they feel comfortable exploring it would be awesome. The other modification is that we could use some pages from public domain text to practice with since we could insert errors legally for the purpose of the practice. That way, even if the kit fell into the hands of someone outside of Bookshare, it just wouldn't matter because the text is in the public domain in the first place.


One document I would suggest adding to a kit like this is Jim Pardee's list of special characters that are hard to type from the keyboard, characters that he searches for and replaces with nothing. These are characters like the broken vertical bar and the special dashes. Having that file makes cleaning a scan so fast and easy to do. I use it almost everyday, and I'd be frustrated if I lost it.

What do you all think? Would you find a kit like this to be helpful?

Monica Willyard


Cindy Warford wrote:
Hi all,

My name is Cindy, and I'm a new validator to the Bookshare site.  In working
on my first submission, I find myself in almost total terror that I'm going
to miss something crucial or even minor errors.  I know that all of the
human scanners are very conscientious and clean up a lot of errors
themselves, but I feel that it is my place as the validator to perform this
job.  I started thinking, what would help someone like myself, and would
like to propose the following for discussion:

A Validation Getting Started Packet

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