[bksvol-discuss] Re: quick question on validating copyright info

Thank you. This is really helpful. 

-----Original Message-----
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mayrie ReNae
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 5:59 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: quick question on validating copyright info

Hi Anne,

         You don't need to go online and look up copyright info 
unless you think, for some reason, that what is in the book is 
questionable. Poorly scanned is the most likely problem.  You just 
want to make sure that the title page and copyright page are in the 
book and legible.

         And you don't need to check for electronic copies of the 
book anywhere else.  I'm not sure why that would need to be checked, 
but it doesn't.

         Bookshare actually only requires that a few things be done 
during validation: varify that all title, author, and copyright 
information is present and legible in the book, all pages of the text 
must be present, and at least 90% of all page breaks must be present 
in the book.  However, doing just these few things can result in a 
book of uncomfortably poor  reading quality being included in the 
collection.  I'll list below some things that you can do to be sure 
that the quality of the book that you validate is the best that it 
can be.  They seem, I know, like a lot, but do make a huge difference 
in the quality of the book.

Run a spell check on the book.
Make sure that chapter headings which are the first line of text on a 
page have above them the page number of the book followed by a blank line.
Remove all running headers. (The Bookshare tools are supposed to do 
this, but don't very well.  It is more effectively done by hand 
during validation.)
Words which begin on one page and end on the next should be moved to 
one page or the other.  In other words, eliminate end of page hyphens.
In the most ideal world, both page breaks and page numbers should be 
surrounded by blank lines.  This means that a page should look like this:
Page break
Blank line
Page number
Blank line
Text on the page
Blank Line
Next page break.

If page numbers appear at the bottoms of pages you can either move 
them to the tops of pages and follow the form above, which helps when 
navigating to find the actual beginning of a page when using the page 
number as search criteria.
For pages with page numbers at the bottom, the page would look like this:
Page break
Blank line
Text on the page
Blank line
Page number
Blank line
Next page break.

Pages containing chapter headings as the first line of text should 
look like this:
Page break
Blank line
Page number
Blank line
Chapter heading
Blank line
Text on the page
Blank line
Next page break.

I know that all of that stuff seems like a lot of work.  Admittedly, 
it is.  But doing those things that I have mentioned will allow the 
book of best possible quality to be added to the Bookshare 
collection.  About the only thing that will result in better quality 
than these steps would be to add to the list, reading the book from 
cover to cover.  Many of us do actually do this.  I personally don't 
choose to validate books that I am unwilling to read from cover to 
cover.  But that, like most of this e-mail is not a requirement for 
validating a book.  It just increases the likelihood that the copy of 
the book in the Bookshare collection is the most accurate copy that a 
careful human can get.

Don't let all of this stuff scare you off, please.  There are lots of 
people willing to help you and answer questions.  And it really is a 
lot of fun, and a great source of personal satisfaction to offer to 
the Bookshare collection an excellently scanned and proofread copy of a
book.

I do hope that I haven't scared you off with all of this 
information.  But, you did ask.

Peace,
Mayrie

At 05:10 PM 1/29/2008, you wrote:
>Hello folks,
>
>Some quick questions from a newbie. So when we validate the 
>copyright info of a book, do we just check if the info is there? Or 
>do we actually go look up the copyright info? And things like 
>proprietary materials, I am assuming that we should check to see if 
>the title already exists in digital forms elsewhere?
>
>Maybe I am not looking at the right place on the Volunteer manual 
>but I couldn't find a detail list of tasks that I should be doing 
>other than the 5 things listed under "Determining Whether a Book 
>Should Be Recommended For Approval or Rejection."  Any wisdom is 
>very much needed.
>
>Thank you
>
>Oh, by the way, I just got this 700 page-long book and the "comment 
>history" shows that it had been returnnew so many times. Is that 
>good signl? bad sign? normal sign?

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