[bksvol-discuss] Re: "Good" Book?
- From: "Rik & Karen James" <d28rik@xxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:44:34 -0600
Hi Marilyn,
Hooray for you, for coming on to spend your time and talent validating
submissions to Bookshare. Thank you and welcome.
The things you described about that book, sounded to me like it would not be
a pleasant reading experience. When I first started getting books from
Bookshare, often there were so many books with all the scan errors, I was
not very happy. But things have really improved. And I think the community
which is us, as this is a membership little society, have only so much time,
and there is a lot of really great and important things to read. And
reading for the blind is just like for anyone else. The distraction of
jibberish is really a second class way to read, and whether I am reading a
book I downloaded, or now days scanning and submitting, or validating
others, I think the value of the best possible quality is what I'd like to
see all our members strive for, and insist upon.
So I would reject that book, state the reasons, and get another one to
validate. Challenge yourself with a book submitted as excellent, ask
yourself how much an excellent rating means to you and to all of us when it
becomes a part of the collection.
Iguess having said that, it must be clear that I think accepting good
quality don't get it. I think maybe Excellent Only is the way to go. But
that is of course just my opinion. Maybe that is extreme.
Thanks.
Rik
_____
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Monica Willyard
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 2:17 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: "Good" Book?
Hi, Marilyn. I don't know if you've noticed this. Our submission quality
ratings are fairly broad and somewhat subjective. In previous years, we had
3 quality ratings, fair, good, and excellent. Books rated fair were pretty
messy, and Bookshare no longer accepts them. Books rated good have errors
throughout but are mostly legible. Books rated excellent are supposed to
only have a few errors but are quite readable.
I know you like a challenge, and I applaud that. Normally I suggest that
volunteers start with books in excellent shape because those books are
easier to work on. Choosing the easier books lets a person focus on learning
the process of validation without being overwhelmed.
For the most part, scans rated good on the step 1 page are raw scans that
haven't been proofread before submission. As long as they don't have missing
pages, we fix the spelling errors and get them into the best shape possible.
If they have either missing pages or pages that can't be read due to very
large blocks of garbled text, we ask the submitter to provide the pages for
us. If the submitter does not do this, we reject the book and move on.
I'm sorry your first book has turned out to be difficult to validate. I hope
your next one is much easier.
Monica Willyard
Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/plumlipstick
Visit my blog at http://www.scannersguild.com
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