Hey guys,
I do a lot of validating I don't necessarily want to do. For instance, I
pick up a book that's absolutely out of my realm i.e. a romance novel
etc. If its a good quality one, then I just validate it. A lot of the
times, I think we as a group let things stay on the list a long time mostly
because we may not be interested in the books on the list. For example, I
have several books on the list that are sci fi books that I hate to
validate for myself just because that defeats the purpose of validation. I
know that the books I submit, though they may have some errors, I know
because of the way I scan books, that they are well done. Not all of the
books I submit I read completely through, but I always do spot
checking. Sometimes, I think that validaters, and submitters for that
matter, look at the book for a few seconds, determine its complete and go
on, whether or not the quality is good or not. There's not much we can do
about this, but its just a thought I had.
Maybe I should put a call of action to the group. Take one book a day
that's outside of your field of interest, and yes that means textbooks, and
validate it. If its bad quality, and also readable, give it the
appropriate quality rating and go on to the next one. If each volunteer
and I know there's over 100 did one book, we'd be well on the way tto
clearing our backlog. At this point, I'd love it if the admins had another
backlog.
What do you guys think?
Ner At 06:21 PM 6/17/2004, you wrote:
I agree with you Liz, that quality is better than quantity. Over the past couple of weeks I was able to validate about a dozen books because the quality of the submissions were terrific. They were as you said, "a joy to validate." When I submit a book I also try to make the scan as near perfect as I can.
Just my 2 cent's worth.
Grace ----- Original Message ----- From: "Liz Halperin" <lizzers@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 5:04 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] My nickel's worth--quality control
> Ok, I suspect I may get bashed, but here goes anyway: > > I wish everyone would just SLOW DOWN. There seems to be this frenzy to > get books into the collection, and less care on their quality. As a > braille reader, I know I am in the minority, but my patience for sloppy > books is low. > > When I scan a book I am very careful to send a clean copy up. I don't > expect the validator to have to do much of anything except make sure no > corruption of the file has occurred. I am proud of quality over > quantity. > > I have been doing some validating and there have been a few books > equally clean as those I submit. They are a joy to validate. Most have > problems. I fix what I can. Books are submitted without the ISBN listed > (even though it's right there), sections missing, whole messed up pages. > When I am faced with many blank pages and then text pages run together > and too many spelling errors and character errors, I feel no guilt to > reject the book. It's not worth spending so many hours on. Better to get > it rescanned in a better version. When I finally validate something, > it's clean and ready to go. Any problems after that are from the > Bookshare conversion processes. > > With over 500 books waiting for validation, I wish there would be a > moratorium on scanning submissions. When there was too much backlog at > the Bookshare end, they made a concerted effort to get caught up. It's > now OUR end that needs the effort, the volunteers. > > The two lists, books-volunteer-discuss and books-discuss, are very very > busy. What if all the time spent reading and writing on the lists was > spent on validating, for awhile, at least? > > What if scanners made an effort to send up better quality? What if > validators had better quality to start with and so could approve faster > and cleaner? What if we humans went beyond spellcheck and made sure that > other errors were caught? Errors such as "form" for "from" and "end" for > "and" and stuff like that? What if we went for quality over quantity > for awhile? > > Liz in Seattle > > Liz Halperin > Seattle, WA > lizzers@xxxxxxxxxxx > > >
Noel Romey Arkansas, USA View my insights at my live journal: http://djner.livejournal.com
