[bksvol-discuss] Re: low cost changes and bookshare engineering
- From: Monica <plumlipstick@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 17:33:04 -0400
Hi, Elizabeth. This is the copy of the post you asked for.
(reposting starts here)
Jake, I can see how you would think that revamping Bookshare would
cost a lot of money. Would you consider an alternate point of
view? I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on what I have to
say. You are a strong member of Bookshare, and I wonder if you would
be open to sharing some of these ideas with the staff at some point
since you work with them sometimes. My post is intended to spark
creativity, and to say that we have more options than seem to be on
the table. <smile> I am frustrated, but I'm feeling that way
because I see actions that can be taken in a matter of hours to
drastically improve the Bookshare service for all of us without
financial cost to Bookshare.
I would like to point out to you that not all of the engineering
issues would cost Bookshare money. In fact, 3 out of my top five
could be done by you, me, or any other person with a little HTML
knowledge. Since this is a nonprofit organization, active Bookshare
volunteers could even help to implement some of these over the
summer. These things don't really require money. They require time
and attention to detail. I will admit that some of the big things
would require money, but there's no excuse for fixing some of these
no-cash things. They could make life much easier for all of us,
including the staff. since you asked about the top 5 engineering
improvements...
1. If Bookshare is going to grow, I think this one is urgent like a
house on fire. Fix the volunteer application form so that it
terminates correctly and completes the application process correctly.
It currently leaves active Bookshare members who apply to volunteer
in limbo, dumping them out at a screen saying they're already a
member and can't register to be a volunteer. No email is sent to the
volunteers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx address, and no feedback is given so that
the user is notified that his application has been basically tossed
into the ether. (Please note that this is HTML code that any web
developer worth a darn could do in less than a day.) We are losing
lots of valuable volunteers each month because of the lack of a web page.
2. Implement ftp protocol for book submissions and validations.
3. Add correctly codeed standards compliant form tags to the book
submission and step 2 upload pages so they read correctly in almost
all screen access software. Again, this doesn't require advanced
programming to do.
4. Create a php file to update and publish a list of books that are
currently in the admin queue so no one has to guess who has a book
and where it is. That can be automated with some php scripts so that
no one has to manually publish a list. This does not cost money for
new equipment. It just takes some time and attention.
5. Bookshare volunteers need an easy and accurate way to see how much
credit they have earned in a given year and should be able to
transfer part or all of their credit to someone else. This would
need to be done with an SQL database, and they can handle this with
reliable open-source solutions.
Monica
Visit my blog at: http://plumlipstick.livejournal.com
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