We got the list of staff from Cindy, one of our dedicated volunteers. I have sent a note to Pavi asking her if the list is up-to-date and if it reflects the duties of staff accurately.
The fact that we have to coble together a list and that a volunteer has to do it points out the disturbing disconnect between staff and volunteers which has been allowed to develop since i began volunteering with bookshare over seven years ago.
This disconnect, in my opinion, makes it difficult for new and old volunteers to know who to turn to for particular kinds of information. It makes it difficult for us to promote bookshare in our local communities. Such a disconnect means bookshare cannot utilize our various talents and our immense good will to better support bookshare.
Let me site some examples and ask some questions. Please understand I am frustrated rather than angry, sad rather than angry and generally amazed that an organization who claims to be so short of staff and resources does so little to reach out to its volunteer community.
Who is in charge of reaching out to schools?Is that the same person who reaches out to libraries and local groups who may have contact with seniors? What does John Glass do? I mean specifically on a day to day basis, not his job description.
We keep hearing about all kinds of new things coming out of engineering. Is it perhaps posible to get a quarterly update from somebody?
Now that Claire is gone, who is taking over her responsibilities?Has bookshare staff given up appearing on those tuesday night sessions on Pat's site? At least those sessions gave us a sense of working together with staff to better the organization.
Does bookshare plan to use volunteers to do anything in future other than validate and scan books? For instance, though uploading book descriptions may have to be left to staff, might it be possible for volunteers to look up descriptions on the database Pavi mentioned or is that another example of security being so tight that access to the database will violate some agreement bookshare has with publishers?
Many of the questions i ask are the same ones I have asked for years. I apologize to those of you who have repeatedly heard me ask the same thing over and over again. I ask less often. I am gradually realizing that my role as a volunteer is severely limited. We simply do not have power to change the organization as long as we are not on staff. This is true of any volunteers of course. Despite the share in bookshare we are only volunteers.
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