I agree with you Liz, that quality is better than quantity. Over the past couple of weeks I was able to validate about a dozen books because the quality of the submissions were terrific. They were as you said, "a joy to validate." When I submit a book I also try to make the scan as near perfect as I can. Just my 2 cent's worth. Grace ----- Original Message ----- From: "Liz Halperin" <lizzers@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 5:04 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] My nickel's worth--quality control > Ok, I suspect I may get bashed, but here goes anyway: > > I wish everyone would just SLOW DOWN. There seems to be this frenzy to > get books into the collection, and less care on their quality. As a > braille reader, I know I am in the minority, but my patience for sloppy > books is low. > > When I scan a book I am very careful to send a clean copy up. I don't > expect the validator to have to do much of anything except make sure no > corruption of the file has occurred. I am proud of quality over > quantity. > > I have been doing some validating and there have been a few books > equally clean as those I submit. They are a joy to validate. Most have > problems. I fix what I can. Books are submitted without the ISBN listed > (even though it's right there), sections missing, whole messed up pages. > When I am faced with many blank pages and then text pages run together > and too many spelling errors and character errors, I feel no guilt to > reject the book. It's not worth spending so many hours on. Better to get > it rescanned in a better version. When I finally validate something, > it's clean and ready to go. Any problems after that are from the > Bookshare conversion processes. > > With over 500 books waiting for validation, I wish there would be a > moratorium on scanning submissions. When there was too much backlog at > the Bookshare end, they made a concerted effort to get caught up. It's > now OUR end that needs the effort, the volunteers. > > The two lists, books-volunteer-discuss and books-discuss, are very very > busy. What if all the time spent reading and writing on the lists was > spent on validating, for awhile, at least? > > What if scanners made an effort to send up better quality? What if > validators had better quality to start with and so could approve faster > and cleaner? What if we humans went beyond spellcheck and made sure that > other errors were caught? Errors such as "form" for "from" and "end" for > "and" and stuff like that? What if we went for quality over quantity > for awhile? > > Liz in Seattle > > Liz Halperin > Seattle, WA > lizzers@xxxxxxxxxxx > > >