[bksvol-discuss] Re: Great news about Bookshare.org

  • From: "maithe007" <maithe007@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 05:26:13 -0400

Great news about Bookshare.orgOh!  This is so exciting!!  This is the best news 
I have heard lately. *G*  I told you guys you were doing an awesome job!!  


Maithe
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Lisa Friendly 
  To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ; bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2007 10:21 PM
  Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Great news about Bookshare.org


  Forwarded from Jim Fruchterman:

  I'm happy to share incredible news, which will transform Bookshare.org.
  On Friday, the Office of Special Education Programs of the U.S. federal
  Department of Education made a major five-year award of $32 million to
  Bookshare.org.

  This funding is to fully support all schools and students with
  qualifying print disabilities in the United States, K-12 and
  post-secondary, with access to the entire Bookshare.org collection of
  accessible electronic books and to software for reading those books.  As
  of October 1, 2007, we will cease charging these schools and students
  anything to join Bookshare.org as members. 

  In this initial news flash, I can't begin to share with you all of our
  plans for Bookshare.org now with this funding.  But, we are planning on
  adding more than 100,000 new educational books and materials to our
  existing collection of over 34,000 titles.  We are going to reach out to
  every student, every family with a disabled student, and every school in
  the U.S. to offer them the chance to join the Bookshare.org community
  and transform the practice of making books accessible.  We are going to
  coordinate with schools and publishers to deliver the best quality
  content possible and lower their costs in meeting our shared obligations
  to serve every student with a disability in the nation.  We expect to
  provide millions of books to students through this new program over the
  next five years, at a tenth or less of the historical cost of providing
  these services.


  And, we expect our improvements to serve all of these students will make
  Bookshare.org better for all of our Bookshare.org users.
  Bookshare.org's track record of being highly responsive to our members
  will be enhanced with significant funding to implement major
  improvements to our content and services.

  Our volunteer community is an essential part of what made this grant
  possible, and you are a crucial part to making this a success in the
  future.  Your commitment to our shared vision of better access to
  information is core to where we are heading.

  We want to make equal access to educational materials for disabled
  students a reality!

  Jim

  Jim Fruchterman

  President and CEO

  Benetech

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