blind people I know who are avid readers all rave about how wonderful
bookshare is. This is not a statistical sample, but it comes up all
the time for me in casual discussion with friends. I'm not the only
one to consider bookshare one of the best things that's happened for
me in the blindness field. I am not a student and don't have a
university responsible for getting reading material for me yet I have
things I want or need to learn about. I am not and can't get an
agency to buy new equipment for me. But with what I have already, I
get this wonderful resource for an unimaginably low price. The best
thing bookshare has to offer over the other sources of accessible
reading is the amazing diversity of its collection - its like getting
to browse a used bookstore. I know personally that most books that
have come recommended to me by friends or which I needed for a class
not connected to a university or which I heard a review of were much
more likely to be available from bookshare than any of the other
sources. Please also remember that for some of us, this includes me,
all formats are not equal. I am blind but also have ADHD. I do not
process recorded material very well and never use tapes. I finally
returned about 50 books I've had out from NLS and RFB&D planning to
read them and realizing I never would Now that bookshare is
here, went from someone who read, at most a dozen books a year to
someone who reads at least one a week. And there are other books I
use for reference purposes and don't read the whole book. One in
particular was a book I forget the name of about how to get
prescription drugs affordably. I found this right after I lost my
prescription plan and the information in it was invaluable. blind
people have rarely had access to that sort of resource. Would it
matter to volunteers if it turned out that the number of bookshare
subscribers is relatively low (and I'm not saying it is) but that the
subscribers it does have are reading many more books than they would
have been able to otherwise? Or that some of the books that may not
be read now will be available into eternity when someone wants them.
Like a library - you don't need to read all the books in it at once
to want them to be there so that anytime in the future you can use
them to do research or reading or whatever.
One thing that does bother me is that for new books the publishers
most likely have electronic text that would be much better copy even
if the formatting was weird, than what anyone can do with the best
scanner and it seems a shame that people have to spend time scanning
them back into a computer when there are so many older books that are
not available that way that they could be working on and the
collection could be even that much bigger. That seems like a line of
work someone could be doing if there were money to fund someone doing
it - working with publishers. Another problem I wish we could work on
is that there is no cooperation between different countries,
sometimes because of copyright restrictions, sometimes just because
it hasn't been done. It seems quite a shame that even within the
English speaking part of the world a book must be recorded, brailled,
and scanned for each country when that time could be spent enlarging
an accessible collection for all. and can you imagine the benefits
when someone is learning another language of being able to access all
the material from the countries where that language is spoken through
one source?
OK, end of my soapbox. Please know that at least for some of us,
bookshare is an awesome invaluable resource. I only wish I had the
time to do more volunteer work myself.
Thanks to all of you.