[bksvol-discuss] Re: our commitment to you: from Jim Fruchterman and Betsy Beaumon
- From: Scott Rains <scottr@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2010 11:53:15 -0700
Larry,
You have struck to the heart of Bookshare's member and volunteer-driven
collection development tradition. You have identified the level of detail that
we still count on volunteers for.
What Bookshare in-house is able to do is identify who the PQ publishers are and
notify you when they change. At the practical level we have implemented clever
ideas like the one from our librarian Amy McNeely that partially meets your
request -- Series Captains. The White List of publishers created by volunteers
is another way to approximate your ideal.
Maybe a few people want to team up, on or off-list, to create those specific
suggestions.
Scott Rains
Benetech Fellow, Bookshare Volunteer Department
________________________________________
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Larry Lumpkin [llumpkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 11:19 AM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: our commitment to you: from Jim Fruchterman and
Betsy Beaumon
What would be helpful would be specific series of books needed, genra or
titles. My wife is good at finding books from used bookstores and we don't
mind buying if we can be reasonably assured that our work won't be replaced.
________________________________
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nicole Gnutzman
Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 12:46 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Jim Fruchterman; Betsy Beaumon
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] our commitment to you: from Jim Fruchterman and Betsy
Beaumon
Jim and Betsy asked me to share their thoughts on Benetech's commitment to its
volunteer program.
Dear Bookshare Volunteers,
We wanted to give you some thoughts on the critical importance of volunteers to
Bookshare and its mission of getting everybody in the world with a print
disability access to the books they need for education, employment and full
inclusion in society. Although there’s been a lot of change in Bookshare, one
thing that won’t change is our need for volunteers that share our dedication to
that mission.
Bookshare is the first library for people with print disabilities built
primarily by people with print disabilities (as well as book-lovers of all
types!). Our credo has been that if someone thought a book was worth scanning,
we thought it was worth sharing. We knew that people with disabilities had few
choices for accessible materials, and that scanning was a frustrating and slow
process.
The volunteers built Bookshare into a potent force for equality: we’ve
revolutionized a field that was falling far short of meeting the goal of
equality when it comes to access to the printed word. And you’ve worked with
us to revolutionize the quality of our scanned books through meticulous
proofreading. Thanks to partnerships with over 60 publishers (especially a
handful of huge trade publishers), we have now been able to add thousands of
new titles to Bookshare electronically, delighting our users. Scott and Pavi
have shared with us, and our management team, some of the negative impacts this
has had on the morale of some of our volunteers. This is especially true when
a publisher-supplied version of a title displaces a volunteer-supplied version
of that same title.
We know some people feel like that’s not respectful of their volunteer time, or
that somehow their volunteer time was wasted. I hope you realize that it has
been the potent force of our volunteers creating Bookshare that has brought so
many modern publishers to the table, since we can tell them that we already can
scan all of their books, but providing it electronically will save us time and
the cost of buying a book, chopping it, scanning it and proofreading it. The
two things they want in return from us is to publicize their social
responsibility and replace our scanned versions with the version they supply.
The replacement issue is pretty much a standard requirement: publishers want to
be assured of the quality of their books we’re distributing. For the publishers
it’s built into the publishing culture, they do believe their original product
is superior and that this requirement implements their contractual
responsibilities to the authors, even though most readers will concur that
these are also not perfect. While there are exceptions, the value of having
15-20,000 publisher supplied books over a year to our users is incredibly high.
These publisher partnerships are a terrific way to help advance our mission, in
terms of quality, quantity and uniquely, reach outside the United States. But,
they are not going to replace our need for volunteers. We have a long way to
go to deliver equal access to our users, and the market is going to fail to
fill these needs for the foreseeable future (even as we applaud the recent
accessibility work of Amazon, Apple and Google).
Let me give you some ideas of the gaps that still exist:
� Older books, specialty books, or simply books that aren’t in the top 5%
of sales during the years since 2000. While it makes sense for us to invest
the effort of the amazing Robin Seaman, our Publisher Liaison, and our
engineering team to support a publisher who can give us 4,000 titles at once,
there aren’t very many more of those big name publishers, but there are over
25,000 publishers.
� Proofing PDF files. The bulk of publishers in the U.S., and almost all
publishers in the developing world, don’t have the modern XML capabilities of
the major trade publishers. We are getting tons of PDF books from these
publishers, which need volunteer effort to convert into accessible form.
� The international challenge: new titles, new publishers, new languages
and new communities of Bookshare volunteers in other countries who would
benefit from mentoring. Americans have Bookshare, but the average person with
a print disability has nothing. We have so much more to do globally!
� Proofing textbooks. The textbook industry is way behind the technology
curve and Carrie is sitting on stacks of hardcopy textbooks sent in by teachers
from around the country.
� Metadata. Even if we have something, it only helps if the person
looking for it finds it. We can use significant volunteer help cleaning up the
information about our information.
� Quality improvements. Improving quality on older, lower quality books.
� Image description. A huge challenge that our field has barely begun to
scratch the surface of. Our publisher contracts do allow us to add them to the
publisher-supplied books and we recently received a major award over five
years from the Department of Ed for the DIAGRAM Center, to research and then
develop technology to reduce the cost of doing image descriptions. The
centerpiece is developing tools for better and faster volunteer image
description. Stay tuned!
The list goes on. While the need for volunteer work on major trade books of
the last five years is going down as these come in directly from publishers,
these other needs are acute.
Our responsibility is to get better at communicating with volunteers about our
needs, and about what’s going to be happening. Our technology roadmap has
numerous improvements planned around improving visibility on these issues so
that you can avoid doing those books that are likely to come in directly in
from the publisher. But, there are and will be thousands of opportunities for
volunteer tasks that are unlikely to ever be done any other way than through
volunteer efforts. We really want to create systems where having volunteer
work displaced quickly by publisher supplied content is a rarity.
We hope you’ll find personally rewarding volunteer opportunities now, and in
the future, with Benetech. For those of you who aren’t excited about the
changes, we understand. But, please be 100% clear: Bookshare volunteers have
been the primary force for revolutionary change in accessibility of books.
There are many thousands of students and adults with disabilities that have far
greater access to the printed word thanks to your past efforts. But, the
revolution is far from finished: we’re serving 100,000 people today and there
are over 100,000,000 who need Bookshare on the planet. We hope you’ll continue
to volunteer your time in helping realize the vision we all share of equal
access for everyone who needs it!
Jim Fruchterman & Betsy Beaumon
Nicole Gnutzman
Director, Literacy Operations
nicoleg@xxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:nicoleg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
www.bookshare.org<http://www.bookshare.org>
www.benetech.org<http://www.benetech.org>
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