[bksvol-discuss] Re: "OT" Introductions to Bookshare Summer In-House Volunteers
- From: Scott Rains <scottr@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Scott Rains <scottr@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, "bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 10:09:08 -0700
Bookshare volunteers,
As I promised yesterday here is the first of several in-house Bookshare summer
volunteers introducing themselves to you.
Scott Rains
Benetech Fellow, Bookshare Volunteer Department
My name is James Fong and I am an in-house volunteer.
I have lived in the Bay Area for a long time...What piqued my interest in
becoming a volunteer with Bookshare is its worldwide outreach to the visually
impaired community. Before coming to Bookshare, I had extensive experience in
dealing with the deaf community, both as a volunteer and as a paid employee.
Through this experience I was given the opportunity to mentor a young deaf
child. I was able to be a part of his life for 12 years. In addition, I was
able to do some sign language interpretation for a local church's musical and
drama productions twice a year, for a number of years.
Before I decided to become a volunteer here at Bookshare, I had checked out the
Benetech website because I was in the process of lookin' for another job. What
I had read on the Bentech website and more specifically under Bookshare, it
seemed like an interesting place to become more involve in helping people. I
also have an interest in reaching out to the world wide community. While in
high school and in college I took a few classes in Spanish as well as a class
in German. In recent years, I have also taken a deeper interest in learning
more about the culture that I was born into and learning to appreciate it even
more.
While I have been volunteering here at Bookshare, I have learned to appreciate
more of what you guys are doing to allow the visually impaired community to
read books. Since I have been mainly scanning book here on site, I have taken
the opportunity to learn more about how the visually impaired person actually
read books. I had spoken with a Bookshare employee recently. I was able to get
a better idea of how the employee was able to do his work as well as seeing for
myself on how a visually impaired person would read a book .Another benefit
that I had received from volunteering was a better appreciation about reading
in general. It is amazing stuff.
________________________________________
From: Scott Rains
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 10:29 AM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Belated Introductions to Bookshare Summer In-House Volunteers
Volunteers,
Sometimes the obvious just slips right past me!
For the past month a steady flow of summer volunteers have contacted Bookshare.
Several have started to come in regularly. In fact, on Wednesdays we have had
up to eight scheduled (although not quite that many computer available for
them. smile )
I have asked some of our regular summer in-house volunteers to write up a quick
note about themselves and their tasks. Some chop & scan textbooks. Some file or
recycle books off to Africa or a landfill. Some write synopses. Others
quality-check books and metadata on PQ and vendor submissions. All of them
contribute firsthand descriptions of their tasks to me for incorporation into
training materials for future volunteers.
I'll share notes from these in-house volunteers here on the list as "OT" as
they come in. These volunteers won't become list members while working in-house
as their tasks are somewhat different than what off-site volunteers do but some
have indicated a desire to continue as scanners an proofers after their time
here as well so over time you will get to know them too.
Volunteers are definitely not going out of fashion at Bookshare. Your work is
still at the heart of growing the Bookshare collection and fulfilling the
mission of getting high-quality books out to print-disabled readers in a timely
way.
Scott Rains
Benetech Fellow, Bookshare Volunteer Department
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