[bksvol-discuss] Re: The down side of this page break thing
- From: "Rui Cabral" <rui@xxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 16:26:06 -0500
Hi Everyone:
The bottom line here is that even with the fact that bookshare is a
volunteer organization, we can do better.
The technology is currently at hand where this is quite possible. it does
not and should not have to be some distant eutopian vision.
For instance, sometime back I validated an 870-page book and it was over
99.8% accurate. You didn't find an error for pages at a time. (nice job
Kenneth)
Then i see books that are a third that size and have 4 times as many errors.
I litterally got a headache trying to go through it.
Needless to say that book didn't make the grade.
In my opinion, (this is my opinion only) the ratings should be good and
excellent only.
Yes I'm aware there are books which are mistakenly marked as fair. But
removing those from the equation for a moment, I believe there should only
be 2 ratings.
Now quite frankly the fact that with NLS you only new what page it was
every 40 pages or so ticked me off. But I didn't have a choice. We have a
very, very rare opportunity here ladies and gentlemen to shape the service
to meet the needs of the (paying) customer.
If certain members can deal with reading *:s`gjkxl xlt/; passages like that
then more power to you. I certainly can't and I know i'm not alone.
Members who can read those passages can also read a near-perfect scan. I
however, can not read a scan riddled with errors, missing words, etc.
(Nothing like decoding a book)
As far as the pagebreaks go, if it is a good scan and if it has page #s then
I will insert page breaks. Those however, are 2 big if's.
Believe me, I do not like rejecting books, that was someones work and I
recognize that.
But what I don't want to do is reduce bookshare to a crapshoot in terms of
when our paying customers download a book to read, is it readable?
After all, some of the books on my rescan page are rated "excellent."
-- Rui
Bookshare.org Unofficial Volunteer Scanning Page
http://members.cox.net/booksharescans
hatemail can be sent to: rui@xxxxxxxx
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Pietruk" <pietruk@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004 12:15 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: The down side of this page break thing
> Paula
>
> BookShare doesn't want a small collection. I think that perhaps some of
> the powers in Palo Alto are attempting to address some of the outside
> criticisms the service gets from those that hold it to the NLS type
> standards.
> Unfortunately, those blind perfectionists, as I call the ney sayers, don't
> fully understand what BookShare is and attempts to be, a sharing medium,
> and holds the service to a notion it likely can never attain if it
> continues to make available the amount of material it does.
> BookShare gets its submissions from volunteer scanners; and those people
> who are disappointed often are the same ones that complained about the
> recorded books from volunteer organizations when they were in school.
> Little do they stop to think that if it were not for those dedicated
> readers who imperfectly recorded their textbooks they'd have no books at
> all or, if they did, the preparation time would have been far greater.
> And it is the very nature of the BookShare system why the publishing
> industry shouldn't fear it anymore than they feared Recording for the
> Blind, Educational Tape Recording for the Blind, and other grassroot
> volunteer projects.
>
>
>
>
Other related posts:
