[bksvol-discuss] Re: Introducing myself
- From: "Denise Wagner" <denisecwagner@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 11:39:29 -0500
Thanks, Monica, for the tips, and especially for sharing your story. I think I
chose a book I'm going to like (I checked out the synopsis on Amazon before I
downloaded it:-)), it's rated Excellent, and it's been waiting since July, so
I'm feeling quite happy about it. I eventually want to get to scanning -- my
office has a duplex copier that will scan into pdf -- but I have no idea how to
go about it. I think I'll wait to explore that aspect of Bookshare until after
I've done some proofreading first:-).
I do have another question, though. When I was browsing for a book to
proofread, I found alot of BSO books. I was bummed since some of them looked
like my kind of genre. How does a person get a book reserved for her? Is it
"who you know"?
Also, my husband likes completely different books than I do, and he's a
scientist (yuck), so if he decides he'd like to give it a try, is it ok to let
him proofread under my account, or does he need to set up his own? He may
never do it, but I just thought I'd ask.
Denise
----- Original Message -----
From: Monica Willyard
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 11:27 AM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Introducing myself
Hi Denise. Welcome to Bookshare. I'm so glad you're here. J Yes, this list
has archives you can browse through if you like. Even more helpful than our
archives is our Scanning and Proofreading Manual found at
https://wiki.benetech.org/display/BSO/Scanning+and+Proofreading+Manual This
manual is written by Bookshare staff whereas the posts on this list are mostly
written by volunteers who may interpret the manual in various ways. If you go
to //www.freelists.org you can search for this list and read through our
archives.
I have three tips to share with you that will make volunteering easier and
more fun.
1. Relax. Don't worry about making mistakes. We've all made them when we
were new, and we probably have made worse ones than you. You'd have to work at
it to top some of the ones I've done. Since we all started out where you are,
don't be afraid to ask for help or think your question is a silly one.
2. Have fun. Work on books that matter to you, ones that make you smile or
that you feel passionate about. Many of us have discovered that we do our best
work when we truly care about the book we're working on. If nuclear physics
bores you, you won't notice scannos nearly as well as if you're reading a book
from a genre that you like.
3. Start with easy books. For people who are new proofreaders, I recommend
taking books rated excellent. Books rated good are often harder to fix up, and
some of them actually have to be rejected. Since there are some things to learn
about how Bookshare works and about proofreading scanned books, I think new
volunteers do better if they start with an easy win, success that helps them
feel more confident. This is just an opinion on my part.
I didn't know about the whole book quality thing when I came to Bookshare.
The first book I took to proofread was rated fair. It was a textbook, and I
took it because it had been waiting to be proofread for over a year, and I
wanted to be helpful. I cleaned up what I could, but there were a lot of messed
up pages in the book. In hindsight, I should have rejected that book. It really
was a mess. I didn't know that though, so I put the book into the collection
with a fair rating. Then I found out about rejecting books with lots of totally
unreadable pages and discovered I'd made a mistake. I thought everyone would
notice and would be upset with me for doing that and stopped volunteering for
awhile. It took awhile to see that others had made similar mistakes and that
people sort of expect new volunteers to have questions and even make some
bloopers at first.
Bookshare no longer accepts books that are fair scans, scans that have
serious problems. You won't make the same mistake I did. I'm just sharing my
story so you'll see why I've made these suggestions to you. I broke all 3 of my
"rules" by worrying about a mistake, taking a book about a subject that didn't
interest me, and starting with a book other volunteers had taken and put back
because of its flaws.
Monica Willyard
"The best way to predict the future is to create it." -- Peter Drucker
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