Hi. According to what Jesse told me at the time, this isn't correct. It
is up to bookshare to get new books from PG as they see fit. PG doesn't
have the resources to send large amounts of books to any group. If you
want a large number of books for free, the best thing is to get the PG DVD
or CD. Either are free but of course donations are appreciated. All the
PG books are made available on the ftp site or the web within an hour or
two of the posting notice being sent, so bookshare or any other site can
get them almost immediately. As I mentioned before, there are full xml
feeds of their catalog or just the new books, so that is no excuse. They
could add the new PG books in a completely automated manner if they wanted,
so it would not take any time away from the staff.
Also, the problem with the PG books that are available is that over time,
PG has corrected many errors in the text and new editions have been
released. Bookshare does not have those new editions, so you are stuck
with a book that has errors which have already been fixed and shouldn't be
there.
Also, you made a comment that PG stuff is too old and doesn't interest
you. I encourage everyone on this list to please yell at congress about
this. The reason why PG books are so old is because of the US copyright
law. Everything prior to 1922 is in the public domain. Almost everything
after 1922 is not in the public domain and will not be for 70-120 years,
depending on various circumstances. The Hobbit for example, published in
1937, won't be in the public domain until about 2070. I, PG, and others
would love to see the copyright law changed.
Finally, I'll conclude with this thought. The only good reason to download
books from bookshare instead of PG, apart from the fact that it might be
easier for some people, is that they have DAISY and brf formats while PG
doesn't. PG usually adds about 10 new books per day which apparently will
never be seen on bookshare, since they have stopped gathering from PG. I
found one book in particular from PG about early means of sign language for
the deaf, as well as many cookbooks and old magazines, but you will not
find them on bookshare. This is too bad, if nothing else because of the
DAISY and brf formats that bookshare offers.
At 09:24 PM 3/11/2005 -0800, you wrote:
I can't document it, but my understanding is that PG sends books to bookshare in large groups. Maybe bookshare hasn't had a chance to absorb them, yet. And maybe they only want some. I do some work for PG (not as much as before I found bookshare -- just enough so that I don't get dropped) and a lot of that stuff is *very* old and not particularly interesting(at least to me -- partly why I don' t do more) -- but some of it certainly is. I sent in Mark Twain's Eve's Diary to both PG and bookshare.
If you find on PG a particular book that is not on bookshare and you'd like it, you could ask for it, I'm sure. Then you could download it in whatever form is easiest for you to read.
