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
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