[bksvol-discuss] Re: Bookshare's Purpose in Your Eyes
- From: "robert tweedy" <rtweedy2@xxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 04:13:17 -0500
Just to clify one thing, if you want to get more than 100 books just write
support@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and they will be happy to allow your account more
books to download.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Baechler" <bookshare@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2004 2:57 AM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Bookshare's Purpose in Your Eyes
> Hello all. I am sure that many others will chime in here, but I have not
> read anyone else's thoughts yet. Personally, I think it should be a
little
> bit of both. In other words, it should be like a bookstore in that it
> should have the latest bestsellers and the like, but it should also be
like
> a library since it should attempt to make every book ever published
> available in an accessible form.
>
> For a long time, I religiously checked Web-Braille. I found ways to
search
> their catalog for books not yet released in hardcopy Braille and that they
> had not announced to the general public. That is until I became a member
> of bookshare.org. I put off joining because I did not want to pay the $50
> plus a $25 setup fee. However, when I checked _Braille Book Review_ for
> May-June 2002 and found almost nothing at all which interested me, I
> decided to join. Even with a limit of 100 books per month, that is only
> pennies per book. This is not as good as being totally free, but I was
now
> able to download about 10,000 books at the time when Web-Braille only had
> about half that many. Also, if I downloaded the DAISY format, I could
> instantly have a plain text copy without running the file through a
Braille
> translator as I did with Web-Braille. The book was in one file instead of
> several volumes. No more did I have to search nine files to find
something
> in a reference book.
>
> Is bookshare.org perfect? Definitely not. I think it would be impossible
> to please everyone. As far as improvements, one thing I would really,
> really like to see is more newspapers and magazines. At least with
> Web-Braille, I can read _PC World_ with everyone else, even if it is a
> couple months behind. The problem I have now is that NLS only ships some
> magazines on cassette. A good example is _Ellery Queen's Mystery
> Magazine_. I beg anyone who has printed issues to please scan them. It
is
> annoying for me to have to listen to a magazine on two four-track
> cassettes. I would much rather read it myself. Hey, I can store it on
> CD-ROM if I want, along with my other thousand books I downloaded. That
is
> very appealing!
>
> Another problem with bookshare.org is the category system and the lack of
> synopses for many titles. Well, that is actually two separate problems,
> but they are somewhat related. The category system problem is minor. I
> would like to be able to get a complete list of all 3,000 books in the
> science fiction category without downloading a bunch of web pages which
> only list 50 at a time. Maybe there is a legal reason for this, but I
> don't see what it is. If you (the staff) are concerned about the general
> public getting the complete book list, set this up only for members or
> something. I do not agree with the idea of splitting the subcategories
> into smaller sub-subcategories. How, for example, do you set apart the
> different types of mysteries. There are espionage stories, private
> detective stories, romances with some suspense, suspenses with some
> romance, etc. I fail to see how anyone can split these off and still be
> fair. I do wish that _Star Trek_ and _Star Wars_ had their own categories
> though.
>
> Regarding the synopsis problem, I wish there was a way that volunteers or
> members could go back and fill in synopses when they are missing or
> incomplete. Yes, folks, people do look at them. I cannot emphasize how
> unhelpful "none" is. As far as combining the long and short into one, I
> say only accept one long synopsis and arbitrarily split it at 200
> characters. If people want to see the part that got cut off, they can
open
> the book information page. This is how most large databases are designed,
> at least based on what I have seen. I again emphasize that a useful
> synopsis is important! This is something that potential members and
> contributors look at.
>
> There is one more issue which needs to be addressed. It is critical that
> volunteers do the best they can. Why? Because I know of at least one
> author who was turned away by what he didn't see. His name is Jack French
> and he recently wrote a book related to old time radio. I know there are
> other blind people here who care about OTR, but since he saw not even one
> scan, he decided that no one would be interested so did not submit a
> digital copy. I have contacted several authors of books about OTR and I
> got a couple interested, but they were worried about piracy. I would
> suggest clearly pointing out links for authors on the home page and doing
> even more to emphasize that piracy is a very small issue because of the
> membership structure. I did get one author of science fiction books to
> donate digital copies of all six books he wrote. They are the Starman
> series. Just look for "Starman" in the title search. My thanks to Mr.
> Jonathan Cooper. He also submitted several scans from his personal
> collection. I am not trying to brag, I am only trying to point out that
> potential authors do look at every book you validate and submit. If there
> are obvious errors, that could be one less author's books you will see
posted.
>
> I would like to mentione one more wonderful thing about bookshare.org in
> closing. Even now with Web-Braille, it could take a year or more to see
> some titles show up. The best example is the latest Harry Potter
> book. Last year, bookshare.org had it the day after it hit the
> streets. NLS took until this year to finally post it and I think it was
in
> 12 or 14 volumes. It is wonderful to actually have books available the
> year they were published. I can now get books on my want list within days
> or weeks of publication, not years. For the first time that I can
> remember, I can now concentrate on getting those older, out of print
> mystery and science fiction titles rather than trying to find something
> from the current decade. It amazes me how long it takes NLS to get even
> the bestsellers distributed.
>
> In closing, that is my opinion of bookshare.org. I think that overall
they
> are a great organization. If I could change one thing, I would say to add
> more magazines. If one thing needs to be improved, I would say the
> synopsis problem. Do you have a favorite author? Does he or she have
> email? Write to them and explain about bookshare.org. About 99% of them
> have never heard of accessibility for the blind and have no clue about
> bookshare.org. They just might work with you. If you want to contact me
> off list, I will send you the email which I have been sending to
> authors. I hope my comments are beneficial to someone.
>
>
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