[bksvol-discuss] Re: synopses, quality, etc.

  • From: "Paula Muysenberg" <outofsightlife@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 18:12:36 -0500

Jesse,

    What about my suggestion of putting a warning on the website, so submitters 
know that if they take too long to fill in the forms, the site will time out, 
and they must re-log in and start over? As it is now, new submitters are liable 
to receive a very unwelcome surprise. Sorry to keep bringing this up, but it 
seems like Bookshare would want to at least let submitters know that this can 
happen.

Regards,
Paula

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jesse Fahnestock 
  To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 10:07 AM
  Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: synopses, quality, etc.


  In other news, I successfully posted without equal signs or code! Fingers 
crossed!
    -----Original Message-----
    From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Guido Corona
    Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 4:43 PM
    To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
    Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: synopses, quality, etc.



    Thank you so much Jesse. 

    On the subject of my draconian proposal to reject postings based on the 
artistry of synopsis,  that was a complete straw-man,  which I sometimes call 
an 'intellectual irritant'.  I was fully expecting the idea to be vehemently 
rejected by volunteers and staff alike, 
    after some furious discussion on the subject.  I am happy to say I did 
succeed beyond belief! 

    About quoting Amazon:  agreed,  we should not quote Amazon in synopsis,  
but we can look at Amazon book summaries and extremely-loosely paraphrase them, 
 or draw inspiration from them,  without making the attribution obvious, or 
even guessable. 

    A mechanism for volunteers to go and fix book records after books have been 
published, to update summaries,  correct authors, titles, ISBN and the like 
will be extremely welcome. 

    In the meantime,  I invite volunteers who would like some help with the 
creation of synopsis to post their requests to the list,  with a subjectline 
somewhat like: 

    Synopsis help wanted:  Satura by Aloysius WQ. Schmaltzenstein Gavronsky 

    Some of the most tediously verbose volunteers like myself may often be 
delighted to assist. 

    Guido 
      

    Guido D. Corona
    IBM Accessibility Center,  Austin Tx.
    IBM Research,
    Phone:  (512) 838-9735
    Email: guidoc@xxxxxxxxxxx

    Visit my weekly Accessibility WebLog at:
    http://www-3.ibm.com/able/weblog/corona_weblog.html




          "Jesse Fahnestock" <Jesse.F@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 
          Sent by: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
          04/29/2004 09:06 AM Please respond to
                bksvol-discuss 


         To <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>  
                cc  
                Subject [bksvol-discuss] synopses, quality, etc. 

                

         



    Hey all -- sorry I've been offline for some lively conversation! I'll try 
to weigh in where necessary. As always, please feel free to email me offline 
about any of these issues.

    1. Synopses: Just to be clear, while I understand the desire for synopses, 
books missing one or both forms of synopsis should not be rejected on that 
basis, by volunteer or administrator. I have no problem with the urging and 
cajoling of our fellow volunteers to include them, but making them mandatory 
would simply be prohibitive and discouraging for some of our submitters, 
especially those who submit in bulk. 

    2. The synopsis bug: There are a few cases where the synopsis being entered 
will not stick: namely, books that have previously been submitted and approved, 
whether or not they have since been withdrawn. In those cases the original 
synopses will stick. Validators are able to change the synopses on brand new 
submissions, however, so please don't be discouraged! The vast majority of your 
synopses are sticking. We're working on fixing it for books that have already 
existed on Bookshare.org, but it's been a tricky one.

    3. Synopses from other sources: please do not copy synopses from Amazon.com 
or any other source, unless it is the same copy found on the book jacket. That 
is copyrighted material, and while it is "quotable" in a news context (like 
Alison's newsletter) it should not be used as the synopsis in our collection.

    4. Site improvements: the categories issue is a long-standing one, and one 
we've spent a lot of time trying to plan for. While we do acknowledge the need 
for better category management, making changes would require a large amount of 
database work (not to mention likely manual recategorization), and, if it were 
not a completely robust solution, might need to be done over and over again. 
The full-scale answer is to change our metadata source entirely to something 
like what the library of congress uses. This change is probably a ways out 
still, but given our limited resources, it probably makes more sense to make 
that change once rather than try to take half-steps.

    The notification for users of rejection reasons is on the way, I'm told. 
Look for it in a rejection notice coming to you soon! (grin)

    The short synopsis field is a textarea field, and that does not accept the 
maxlength attribute. As Sara (I think) noted, fixing the length would require 
javascript, which is problematic for many users. I will float the idea for a 
single synopsis -- keep in mind that this will be displayed on the search 
results page, however, so it would still need to be pretty limited. You 
couldn't have a 100-word synopsis there.

    5. Regarding text quality: I love the fact that this group has high 
standards -- I'm consistently amazed at the effort being put into the scans of 
others by our volunteers. But I'd encourage us to try to avoid accusatory 
messages when it comes to text quality. There are many mitigating factors, some 
of which have already been pointed out here, and we would be wrong to 
discourage anyone from submitting the books they want to share. So let's focus 
on ensuring the readability and legibility of what has been submitted, and of 
course encouraging our fellow scanners with tips and techniques as many of us 
already do.


    ________________________

    Jesse Fahnestock
    Collection Development Coordinator, Bookshare.org
    www.bookshare.org

    A Project of The Benetech Initiative - Technology Serving Humanity
    480 S. California Ave., Suite 201
    Palo Alto, CA 94306-1609  USA
    (650)475-5440 x133
    (650) 475-1066 FAX
    jesse@xxxxxxxxxxxx
    www.benetech.org

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