As I said earlier I am contemplating scanning a book or more for Bookshare and I may need some help. Let me start by explaining some of my history with scanning. Back in 1996 feeling that the computer revolution was passing me by I acquired an Arkenclone computer and the version of Open Book that was current at that time from the Arkenstone company. I was so ignorant that it is surprising that I even figured out how to plug it in and I was totally on my own. I never did learn to use that computer properly. Looking back on it I could kick myself for not even knowing what technical support was. I was aware that a phone number was available for technical support, but the word technical intimidated me. I thought that if it had anything to do with anything technical then it was way out of my league. Eventually I did figure out how to use Open Book and I actually scanned a few books for my personal use. It is too bad I could not contribute them to Bookshare, but I did not have Internet access at that time and couldn't figure out how to get it. I am not sure how long Bookshare has been around, but it seems like I first started to hear about it around that time. Well, I never did use that computer for anything but Open Book. Eventually it stopped working. By then I had heard here and there enough about technical support lines that I figured out that I should call that Arkenstone technical support number. That is when I found out that Arkenstone no longer existed and now I was calling a company called Freedom Scientific. The technical support guy did listen to my description of my problem though and then told me that my computer was hopelessly obsolete and that it was kaput. Okay, I spent a very long time computerless. Well, the computer was still there, but it did nothing but sit there and occasionally got dusted. The time came that I was feeling even more like I was being left behind by the advance of technology so I saved my money until I could buy a new computer. I was still so ignorant that I knew of nowhere else to start but to call that old Arkenstone, now Freedom Scientific, number. From there I got the address of the nearest Freedom Scientific dealer to me and proceeded to buy a computer with Open Book 6.0 installed on it. The most exciting thing for me was that I also got connected to the Internet for the first time. Boy, did I have fun exploring the Internet. In fact, I got so involved in exploring the Internet that I never did get around to using my Open Book software.
Well, I recently told you guys that I was contemplating scanning some books for Bookshare. I took my first step today by opening up my Open Book for the first time and looking around. As usual, every time I start to learn something new about computers I feel overwhelmed, but some of my use of that earlier version of Open Book came back to me. I could see, though, that this version was considerably different. After exhausting myself with the help pages I took a break and then came back to it and started to just explore the menus. I found that I was actually learning more by just browsing and clicking menu choices to see what would happen than I had been learning from the help pages. Finally this evening I tried scanning something. There was a paperback book on hand and I opened it at random somewhere in the middle and scanned it. I then read the two pages I had scanned and surprisingly enough there were no scannos and except for the need to remove the page headers it appeared to be ready for posting on Bookshare if it had been a whole book. In fact, thinking that I might make it my first scann for Bookshare I checked to see if it was already in the collection. It was. I suppose I will have to find something else for that initial submission.
Now, despite my success with those two pages I am not ready to scan for submission yet. I need to go back and read those help pages some more and experiment with those menu choices some more. I am also sure that I will have to come to you guys to beg for help before I am ready. So here is my first request. A while back someone posted on the list a list of advice for using the Open Book for scanning. It included recommended settings and actions. Could someone post that email again? and if anyone can think of some basic advice to give to a self-taught computer user who is still largely computer illiterate on using Open Book 6.0 for this purpose please offer that advice. Right now, though, I am exhausted by hours of teaching myself and I am heading to bed to await whatever you have to tell me tomorrow.
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