I have a question about the Baen books that can be downloaded as rtf. The Baen ebooks that I have do not have hard page breaks or page numbers. They do seem to have the same copyright as the print books (most publishers put in a separate copyright line for the ebook version). So, if I put in the page breaks and numbers based on a copy of the print book, could that be submitted to bookshare? For that kind of submit, validation ought to be a snap. Of course, if we could get copies from Baen that had the page breaks and numbers, that would be best...
Misha Jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
We do have an agreement with Baen Books: we can add any of their titles, and they've given us global permissions to distribute them to people with disabilities. I would encourage our volunteers to add all of the Baen books they can find. As has been noted, the late founder Jim Baen was a strong supporter of alternative access, and we see it as a way of honoring his commitment. The question of duplication (with other possible means of obtaining accessible books) comes up frequently. Our general answer is that we'd like to have the book. There are several reasons for this: - format problems (what if PDF doesn't work for you? What if you're deaf and blind and need Braille?) - format flexibility (what if you prefer Braille over audio, even though you can hear? What if seeing and hearing the text at the same time works better for you? What if you want to read one way while mobile and another way while in your home or office?) - including some Bookshare.org users who are excluded from some sources (because they have a learning disability, because they are in a different country) - series completeness (we're increasingly trying to make entire series available on Bookshare.org) - ease of access (what percentage of print disabled people are likely to know about a given source, such as Baen's deal?) - cost savings (it's cheaper for us to deal with our users than it is for publishers to do the same: that's often the motivation for working with us) - Lowering the barrier to access by increasing task success (we want the new and existing user to find the book he or she wants the great majority of the time, so that they are confident in the future of havingaccess)I'm probably forgetting more reasons, but the key one is Bookshare.org ethic for collection development. If one person in our community thought it was worth scanning and validating, we want that book. That's why 90% of the Bookshare.org collection is there. Our low cost to add a book because of our dedicated volunteer community makes this a responsible policy, while empowering our readers. Jim Fruchterman To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
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