Reading the thread about publisher quality submissions, I thought it was worth weighing in with more information. The mission of Bookshare.org is to get better access to books to people who cannot effectively access print. I know our volunteers support that mission. I consider the issue of possibly losing quality content, that is, something that makes the reader experience better (like picture descriptions), is always worth looking at. That's because it ties directly to our mission. I hear people worrying about throwing out children's picture books with picture descriptions and replacing them with publisher-supplied versions. But, I don't think we have any children's book publishers providing us with digital content. We're not focusing on them, because there isn't a big win there (34 words in a kids book is not that hard to get in by typing). We're focusing on textbooks and technical books, and getting trade books when we can. Scholastic gave us permission to provide their books globally, but didn't give us any digital content. So, I think folks should not be worrying about a surge of kid's picture books with 34 words in place of 34 words plus nice picture descriptions. The other important part of publishers supplying content is that almost all of them provide these global rights that enable us to expand Bookshare.org to serve all print disabled people globally. That's really important for our mission: many more people need us than live in the U.S. Publishers often require us to replace the scanned books with the digital books, to minimize the concerns publishers and authors have about having errors in their work. This is a big, big concern of authors, and we have to acknowledge that as creators of the wonderful books we share, we have to respect their concern that their works be communicated in the as close to the original quality as possible. Our community has benefited from the dedication of our validators to ensure these outcomes. The issue of "throwing away" volunteer work to give the reader a better quality book seems like an odd issue. Improved quality content has been the number one issue of Bookshare readers when we survey them. It's certainly the number one issue of ex-Bookshare.org users, and I take our failure to serve them seriously. Our volunteers have always embraced making better scans of books. Why does this change when it's the publisher volunteering a better version of the book? We wouldn't keep the fair version of a scanned book around when it was replaced with an excellent scan: we've been throwing them away with our dedication to the readers. Plus, the publisher quality books are increasingly coming to us with improved navigation options. Let's be honest: volunteers will continue to be the primary source of books for a long time: years and years. 95+% of the books in Bookshare.org is there because someone in our volunteer community decided it was worth having. If someone complains that a book isn't of the quality it says it is, we'll replace it with a better one. That's we've decided that if one person in our community thought it was important to have, we will invest the money to buy the books and the energy to replicate it. We're here fighting for equality for readers with disabilities. The "powers that be" are pretty clear about mission and our entire team spends a lot of time trying to figure out the best ways to accomplish that mission. My suggestion is that when there are changes (and there are going to be a lot of really great changes) to Bookshare.org, that we can assume that everybody on the Bookshare.org team, users, volunteers and staff, are all trying to accomplish the grand goal: the highest quality books at the same time as non-disabled people have them, for the same of lower price! 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.