Ah, There in lies the rub. That old #6. One readers notion of readable is another's of execrable. Much has to do with two things, how badly do you want to read the text and how many errors are you willing to accept. It is wonderful seeing the care and concern that most on this list give to a text they are submitting or approving. As a teacher with students who use these books, I wish they were all letter perfect. I think that such will be the case someday. For now, it seems we must accept a less than ideal, but only three years ago, none of this awful problem even existed. No books, no problem! What does seem to be the case is the need for more volunteers to help in validating books. In the days before electronic Braille production, there were thousands of volunteers across the country who had passed their transcribers certification and who banged away at their Perkins braillers at home cranking out books. Seems that there are many more computer literate retirees then ever. They do not need to learn the Braille code to make books available. For the most part, all they need is the skills that many already have, proof reading and word processing. What we need to do is to find better ways to let people know what they might do in a few hours each week at their own computers. I am giving thought to donating the computer I am composing on to our local library for the specific task of providing a computer to volunteers in our little town to use to validate books. If Deb the librarian agrees, I hope to start doing regular small group classes on how to validate. What if there were say 500 other libraries offering something similar. At the rate of one book per day, five days per week each library would validate 260 books. At capacity, such an effort could validate 130,000 books per year. That might go a long way in cleaning up that backlog of texts awaiting valedation. Rather than picking the nits of weather or not a submitted book is good enough to accept, let's work at increasing the numbers of validators, and the access points they need to do validation. Rick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jesse Fahnestock" <Jesse.F@xxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 5:10 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Requirements for acceptance -- the bottom line > Hi everyone -- I have recently received many emails from volunteers confused > about whether they must reject a book or not. I think the higher standards maintained by many members in this group have confused people. Therefore, I will restate, as I did on Monday, what a book must have to be accepted: > > 1. The book is not already on Bookshare.org, or if it is, that it is being > submitted as a superior replacement or transcribed Braille copy. > 2. The book is not an eBook acquired under proprietary agreement (e.g. a > commercial eBook, a book from WebBraille, etc.) > 3. The copyright name and date are included. > 4. The title and author are included somewhere in the book. > 5. The book is not missing multiple pages of core content (core content does > not include tables of contents, indeces, picture pages, or other front or back matter and the like). > 6. The book is readable. > > If a book meets all of these requirements, you may absolutely accept the > book. Indeed, I encourage it. If the book is missing page numbers, or has running headers, or the table of contents is jumbled, or the title page is missing (but the above info is still available), those are not bases for rejecting the book. > > I predict that many volunteers will post follow-up messages regarding other > things that they do, and think that you should do, before approving a book. That is because we have the most dedicated volunteers in the world, and they go above and beyond the call of duty. But even they know that while they may do additional work to improve a book that meets the above six requirements, they should not reject a book that meets them all. So whatever the follow-up messages say, remember that this message is the bottom line! > > I hope that clears it up for everyone! > > ________________________ > > Jesse Fahnestock > Collection Development Coordinator, Bookshare.org > www.bookshare.org > > A Project of The Benetech Initiative - Technology Serving Humanity > 480 S. California Ave., Suite 201 > Palo Alto, CA 94306-1609 USA > (650)475-5440 x133 > (650) 475-1066 FAX > jesse@xxxxxxxxxxxx > www.benetech.org >