[bksvol-discuss] Re: Something of interest
- From: "Chela Robles" <cdrobles693@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:07:27 -0800
Hey Roger, how do you get Daisy books from the site, is it just text?
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"To me, music that breaks your heart is the music that stays with you
forever. It's one thing to be melancholy and one thing to be sophisticated,
but when you get the two of them together in a way people can relate to,
then I think you're on to something. You want the sophistication to lie in
the purity of the sound, the beauty of the arrangements, and the quality of
the performances."-Trumpeter Chris Botti----
--------------------
Chela Robles
E-Mail: cdrobles693@xxxxxxxxx
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Loran Bailey" <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 12:10 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Something of interest
As a matter of fact, when I first visited Archive.org I was astounded at
the number of Daisy books available, but there is a whole lot more too. If
they do get authorization to produce in copyright books for the blind this
could make Bookshare obsolete.
_ _ _
"I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being, neither
white,
black, brown nor red. When you are dealing with humanity as one family,
there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human
being marrying another human being, or one human being living around and
with another human being.... The worst form of a human being, I believe,
is
one who judges another human being by the color of his skin."
Malcolm X
The Militant:
http://www.themilitant.com
Pathfinder Press:
http://www.pathfinderpress.com
Granma International:
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chela Robles" <cdrobles693@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 1:30 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Something of interest
The Internet Archive: An Untapped Resource for the Blind
by Daniel B. Frye
Today blind people can and do access record amounts of written information
through the emergence of scanning and digitization and assistive
technology. We read newspaper articles, books, and other written materials
using NFB NEWSLINE for the Blind®, the National Library Service for the
Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), Recording for the Blind and
Dyslexic, Bookshare, and Audible.com among other resources. Even when
something is not available in an accessible format, current technology
allows relatively easy access to printed texts. Because of the rapid
evolution of access to information, some may even feel overwhelmed by the
array of accessible reading options now available.
The Braille Monitor has recently learned of another Internet-based
resource that makes more than 1.8 million digital books and other material
freely available to everyone with access to the Internet. Founded by
Brewster Kahle in 1996, the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library
based in San Francisco, California, promotes universal access to
knowledge. Although the Internet Archive management team did not have the
needs of blind people in mind originally, they have been receptive to
suggestions for making their vast content accessible to blind computer
users. Toward this end the Internet Archive is exploring a partnership
with the National Federation of the Blind to digitize and preserve our
audio and video files through a grant application to the Institute for
Museum and Library Services, a federal agency. The Archive is also
negotiating with the NLS to use its disability-verification system so they
can provide accessible formats of copyrighted materials to eligible blind
and print-disabled people in the United States. Moreover the Internet
Archive has already been producing its downloadable collection of books
(most older and in the public domain) in the internationally recognized
DAISY format.
According to Linda Frueh, the Internet Archive's regional director for
Washington, D.C., Kahle and his wife established a foundation and launched
the Internet Archive with the goal of recording the entire Internet. Frueh
said that Kahle reasoned, "Here's an enormous, new technology changing
from day to day, and nobody's recording it." Using Web-harvesting
technology, a specially designed computer program that copies and saves
Web pages, the organization has been preserving the evolving Internet.
Kahle began by conducting a bimonthly Internet crawl. "We have one hundred
and fifty billion Web pages archived since 1996," Frueh said. She
explained further, "The way people access old Web pages is through the
Wayback Machine, a search engine for all of the old Web pages archived at
<www.archive.org>. On the results page you'll get a timeline of the
various versions of the Web pages for which you are looking." Historians
interested in the NFB, for instance, could use the Wayback Machine to
review the evolution of our Internet site for the last fourteen years.
Having launched the Internet archiving project, the organization expanded
its goals to digitize other media. Its online library now posts digital
books, music, audio recordings, films, software collections, and more from
its Website. Everything is made available free of charge. "We never have
charged and never will charge for any of our content. Our goal is to make
as much information as possible available to everyone who wants it; we're
not invested in whether we provide information under our own name or as
the behind-the-scenes resource for other Internet services," Frueh said.
Though much of this additional content may be of interest to blind people,
the greatest benefit to the blind will be the large digital book
collection it has already assembled. The most effective way to access
these digital books from the Internet Archive is to visit its dedicated
digital book Website <www.openlibrary.org>. Though visitors can reach the
collection through the main Internet Archive Website, Frueh advises that
both blind and sighted users who are interested only in downloading books
will find it easier to go directly to the dedicated digital Website. The
NFB is working with the Internet Archive to help evaluate and maximize the
accessibility of its several Websites. These are clearly growing in
popularity with a reported three million people a day visiting
<www.archive.org> and two hundred and fifty thousand visiting
<www.openlibrary.org>.
The Internet Archive's book collection reflects its history of working
with academic institutions, libraries, and government agencies. It has
3,324 books in its children's collection at
<http://www.archive.org/detail/iacl>. For examples of scientific
literature scanned by the Archive from the Biodiversity Heritage Library,
visit <http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org>. The Archive has scanned over
thirty-three thousand items in this collection. Frueh says that the
Internet Archive also has the largest Arabic collection outside of the
Middle East and the Library of Congress. The Internet Archive digital
library dwarfs the NLS digital collection, but Frueh reports that her
organization would be delighted to explore expanding its partnership with
NLS, allowing the national library to make all of these titles available
through its frontline resources.
Readers should know that the Internet Archive, a member of the Open Book
Alliance, opposes the currently proposed Google Books settlement. The
Internet Archive and its supporters believe that the settlement as
currently drafted creates an uneven playing field in out-of-print book
publishing, an obscure area of debate among legal and academic scholars
about one aspect of copyright law. Its objections, however, have nothing
to do with the accessibility provisions and promise of rapid access to
many digital books that the Google Book agreement would generate.
Blind readers now have another significant resource at our disposal that
will enrich our lives. We can visit the Internet Archive and its related
Websites for study, work, and recreation. The NFB looks forward to an
ongoing and fruitful partnership with the Internet Archive.
--------------------
"To me, music that breaks your heart is the music that stays with you
forever. It's one thing to be melancholy and one thing to be
sophisticated, but when you get the two of them together in a way people
can relate to, then I think you're on to something. You want the
sophistication to lie in the purity of the sound, the beauty of the
arrangements, and the quality of the performances."-Trumpeter Chris
Botti----
--------------------
Chela Robles
E-Mail: cdrobles693@xxxxxxxxx
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