Hi, Jamie. Your questions are good ones. The Bookshare tools will strip out headers if they are uniform. It preserves the page number. The system doesn't reject books that have headers intact, so your validations are fine. The place where the stripper gets confused is where the headers on each page are different or don't scan clearly. For example, say that the left page has a header with the author's name and the right page has a header with the name of the chapter. This means that the header on the right side pages will change every few pages. In this case, I manually remove headers, leaving the page number intact. So at the top of the page I have a blank line, the page number, and then another blank line. Please know that this is not required for book acceptance. It is what many of us do to make the book as readable as possible. It makes sure that headers are gone and that chapter headings are preserved correctly. When our members read books in html or Braille format, they will not see headers included in the text. Again, this is optional, and no one is going to have a book rejected if it has headers but is a good scan.
Monica Willyard Jamie Pauls wrote:
If there are running headers in a book with page numbers on the same
line, should the page numbers be left when the header text is removed?
If I have validated a book without removing headers, am I correct that
Bookshare has a tool that will do this thereby not causing my
otherwise good validation to be rejected? Thanks.
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Monica Willyard <mailto:rhyami@xxxxxxxxx>
*To:* Bookshare Volunteers <mailto:bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ;
Bookshare Discuss <mailto:bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Sent:* Saturday, September 08, 2007 3:30 PM
*Subject:* [bksvol-discuss] Tips For Getting Your Book Wishes Filled
Hi, everyone. If you've got some requests for books you'd love to
read that aren't in the Bookshare collection, I'd like to share
some tips with you that could help you get your wishes filled.
Some will seem obvious to you while others may not have even
crossed your mind. I hope you'll find an idea here that helps you
get some of your book wishes filled.
1. When you post your request, make sure you give both the title
and the author. Please make sure you spell the author's name
correctly since it's what our volunteers use to search for books
in library catalogs or on Amazon.
2. Get people interested in your book. Include a description of
the book. Paste it from Amazon, describe it yourself, or paste in
a review of the book from somewhere. In other words, get someone
motivated to scan the book because it sounds good. Posting a title
and author is nice, and yet it doesn't give our submitters much to
go on to see if they'd like working on the book. At the end of the
day, volunteers are people, and people are more willing to take
action when they like the idea.
3. Offer to edit/validate the book when it's scanned. Doing this
lets submitters know that their work won't just sit around in
validation limbo for ages. If you say you'll edit the book,
submitters will know that you'll take care of stripping headers.
I'd scan a lot more wishes if I wasn't responsible for doing
header stripping before submitting. As it is, you kind of have to
sell me on a book before I'll scan it because I know I'll have to
do the headers. It's a necessary chore with my own books. I would
dread doing it on a book I don't even want to read.
4. If you can do so, offer to buy a used or new copy of a book if
someone will scan it. While some volunteers are able to get to a
library, many others aren't. I know that a lot of submitters have
bought books that have been requested. If you can't afford to buy
the books, please don't let that prevent you from asking for
books. Just be aware that offering to buy books to be scanned is
one way to help you get books into the collection.
5. Ok, I know this is really obvious, and yet I don't see it done
often. When someone scans one of your book requests, say "thank
you" in in private mail or on the list. Most of us want to know if
anyone reads the books we scan. Since we can't see how many times
a book is downloaded, we have no way of knowing if our book has
been read at all. A little recognition can make the job of
scanning book requests rewarding for the person doing the scan and
will make it more likely that the submitter will work on book
requests in the future.
I hope you find some of these ideas useful. I'm not the ultimate
authority on volunteering. What do you think about these tips? Do
you have other ideas to add to this list?
Monica Willyard
