Print page numbers make it easier for the scanner/proofreader to check the pagination of a book but have nothing to do with the daisy markup such as it is as far as I can see. I always thought that the presence of page breaks determined where the daisy converter put page mark-up. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lori Castner" <loralee.castner@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 5:12 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Books Without Page Numbers
I agree in theory that books added to the bookshare collection should have page numbers, but I also have some concerns.Right now I am validating a fiction book in which very few page numbers scanned. I attempted to add the missing page numbers and thought that I could do so successfully because when there was a blank page at the end of a chapter that page was indicated in the scan. However, at one point when a page number did appear in the text, the numbers I had added were off by one page, and even with a lot of effort I could not find the discrepancy.So I plan to submit the book without page numbers. This book is a really "good read"; it is fiction; no one will suffer from the lack of page numbers.So I see two issues; 1) sometimes page numbers simply will not scan and adding page numbers manually will be a lot more work for a submitter, and in many instances, such as what I might call casual fiction page numbers really don't benefit the book that much. Also, in an instance such as the one I described, the proofreader attempting to add the page numbers may not work out; this book had no Table of Contents or any way to enable me to figure out my discrepancy.Maybe page numbers can be required for certain types of books; textbooks, some types of nonfiction and maybe even bestsellers, but for many lighter reading books isn't it better to have the book in the collection to be enjoyed rather than excluded for lack of page numbers?Cat Lover Lori----- Original Message ----- From: "Pavi Mehta" <pavim@xxxxxxxxxxxx>To: "Monica Willyard" <rhyami@xxxxxxxxx>; <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>Cc: "Bookshare.org Volunteers" <Volunteers@xxxxxxxxxxxx>; <support@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 2:50 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Books Without Page NumbersHi Monica, Thanks for this thoughtful email. We've actually had extensive conversations among the staff regarding page numbers recently. While it is true that we have not required them officially, we are looking to change policy on that shortly. We will be making the announcement soon to the volunteer community that a book submitted to Bookshare must have page numbers on at least 90% of its pages in order to be accepted. We will make the necessary edits to the volunteer manual as well to reflect this. Our reasoning is that fulfilling this requirement helps ensure that readers are able to navigate books with greater ease and those who are students and working on assignments can better keep up with class reading. (And as you rightly pointed out it makes missing or duplicate pages much easier to spot for both proofreader as well as admin approving the books). In terms of approaching Kurzweil for a page number protector, I've ccd our support team on this email to see if they have any input on that. In the meantime, if you have any further feedback on the issue of page numbering or on our intended approach to it, please let us know. It is great to be refining our policies in this way, and though it may entail some initial ruffling of feathers I am sure the end result will be higher quality books for everyone. All good things, Pavi -----Original Message----- From: Monica Willyard [mailto:rhyami@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2009 6:57 PM To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: Bookshare.org Volunteers Subject: Books Without Page Numbers I know of something that is being done that's stripping page numbers and sometimes chapter headings from submitted books as well. Some volunteers, mostly not on the list, have begun using Kurzweil's feature to strip headers automatically. While it does remove the annoying header at the top of the page, it also removes the page numbers as well. I don't think this is being done with any malice or any realization of how difficult proofreading these books can be. It just seems like a handy shortcut. The text of the books is clean and easy to read. Right now, Bookshare still hasn't officially required page numbers, so it's a touchy subject. I have politely asked two volunteers to use another method and was told that page numbers are annoying and that the people don't want to hear them while reading. In both cases, there were missing pages, and I had to go and buy the novel because there was no way to get these people to scan the pages I needed since their print page numbers and my number of page breaks didn't agree. This is a very gray area for me. The only solution I've thought of is to put in numbers by hand, but that's a guessing game since there's not a good way to tell what the page number is for the first page of core content. It may be page 1 in some books but is different in other books. It's usually page 7 in the Harlequin and Steeplehill romances and page 5 in the Berkley Prime Crime series. Without official backing from Bookshare, I don't feel comfortable with either rejecting a book with clear text with no page numbers or continuing to ask that the submitter stop using the Kurzweil header feature. I'm a literalist when it comes to Bookshare's instructions, and the manual is pretty clear about page breaks being required but page numbers being optional. This is because some books do not come with page numbers, and I respect that. The manual does ask proofreaders not to remove page numbers if present, but it doesn't give any direct guidelines for proofreaders about handling books with the page numbers stripped. It also does not strongly advise submitters to refrain from using automatic stripping tools that remove page numbers. I don't think it's right for me to hold a person to a higher standard than what is required by Bookshare. I don't like the situation though. It makes it much harder to spot missing pages, duplicate pages, and unnumbered pages containing ads or photos in the center of a book. I know this causes confusion for Carrie as well since she can't spot missing pages either. Hmm. Since they're writing a new version of Kurzweil, maybe we would have better luck with asking them to write a page number protector so that people could strip headers without losing page numbers. Is anyone on the Kurzweil list or know of someone to approach at Kurzweil where that feature could be requested? Or maybe they could add a "number pages sequentially" feature where you could mark page 1, and the program could insert actual page numbers just after each page break until the end of the file. It would take the define operator page numbers feature a step further and could be a separate menu item so the define operator page number feature would still work as usual. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would make life easier when you have to manually number a 500 page book. What do you all think? Is it worth asking? Monica Willyard "The best way to predict the future is to create it." -- Peter Drucker -----Original Message----- From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of E. Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2009 2:03 AM To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bksvol-discuss] request to submitters I have recently validated several books all of which had lots of junk characters, no page numbers whatsoever or both. If submitters are doing something which removes page numbers along with running headers and footers please do you best to find out how to retain the page numbers. Also please watch out for the following junk characters. For some reason I am finding more of them in submits lately. You need punctuation turned on to read the next few junk character examples. They are ~ ^ tab character * | \ I know it seems these characters can easily be removed. Sometimes what seems easy is harder than you think in reality so if you can prevent them from getting into your submits please help out. You may want to use rank spelling on a page or two of text to find out how it is scanning. Thanks for being understanding. Elizabeth 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. __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 3373 (20080821) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxput the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. 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