[bksvol-discuss] The Broker--strengths and weaknesses
- From: "Kenneth A. Cross" <crossk@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 04:31:23 -0500
Congratulations to the BookShare staff for the timely availability of THE
BROKER, John Hrisham's newest book. For the person who reads for pleasure, it
is great and most enjoyable. But the determination to provide the book without
pagination is a real problem to some users.
For example, since I was once an English teacher, I spend a fair amount of time
either in book discussion groups or running such groups for young adults.
Since the page numbers have been carefully removed, I can't ask the members of
my groups to consult specific pages. And since there are no chapter headings,
I can't use those either--I don't even know without great effort whether they
occur.
For the same reasons, I can't write or check out the writing of others if they
have provided footnotes about the book. I can't even check the print book
quickly to check possible errors in the copy. For example, I am pasting here a
sentence which I think is in error.
Everyone sw r allowed hard and waited for the words to escape through the
heating vents. Now if I had any idea what page of the print book that was
from, I could check it almost instantly, but all I know is that was on page 17
of the BookShare copy.
What makes this disturbing to me is that, in the scanning process, the page
numbers were there. They had to be carefully eliminated. And that careful
elimination means that the book has some real limitations outside general
reading.
Paradoxically, the initial submissions of books are probably much more useful
to someone doing work in teaching and research than are the books which have
gone through an editing process. Is there not some way we could preserve
information and, simultaneously, not plague the general reader?
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