[bksvol-discuss] Transcription of Chat on the List
- From: "Linda Adams" <ladams@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 20:54:05 -0600
Hi, everyone. I just checked the Friends of Bookshare web site, and the file
must still be in RTF because JAWS still wouldn't read whole lines. Since
someone specifically requested it, I will attach the text and Word version of
the Schools and Groups transcription so that everyone can access it easily.
The file names are groups.doc and groups.txt .
Linda Adams
BOOKSHARE GROUP MEMBERSHIPS
** Introduction: Lisa Friendly introduced Susie McKinnon, who is Manager of
School and Group Accounts and does outreach to schools, groups, and
organizations interested in joining Bookshare and having memberships for their
members, students, and clients. Susie does a marvelous job organizing those
programs, creating the web site that supports them, and talking to people about
how to sign up and why they should sign up. Susie was very interested in
explaining about how members could help Bookshare reach out to the community,
which had been discussed previously in the chat room informally.
** How Members Can Help:
1. Tell your friends and family about Bookshare for individuals and for
groups.
2. Tell the organizations to which you belong or the ones in your area to whom
you would be willing to explain Bookshare and what is available to them in
terms of group memberships. We want as many people as possible to take
advantage of Bookshare.
3. Tell your acquaintances such as parents who have kids with print
disabilities.
4. Tell any centers with which you are associated.
5. Tell people with whom you work.
6. If you don't feel comfortable telling people about the full gamut of how
our programs work, feel free to refer them to me, or send them straight to our
School and Group section of our web site.
7. We don't have a list of schools and organizations that we serve for you to
access, so just ask them right away when you contact them whether they know
about Bookshare. If you have a question about a specialized school district in
your area, you can get in touch with me as well.
8. You could write to an author whose book you really like and tell them that
you want to get their book into Bookshare. The author may simply send the book
itself. We don't have to have the books in electronic format. We don't need
the publisher's permission.
9. If you get a chance, talk to publishers and tell them that you would like
to get their books electronically. In order for international members to read
books, that requires publisher permission. If publishers are nervous about
getting the book in electronic form for you, tell them to send the book to
Bookshare rather than to schools because Bookshare is more careful about
distributing books only to qualified students, whereas some schools are too
lenient about giving books to students who are not qualified to receive them in
these accessible formats. Bookshare has a seven-point digital rights
management system that involves fingerprinting, watermarking, etc. NIMAS works
this way: Newly requested textbooks are required to be placed into the
repository. This does not apply to older books. Tell publishers about DAISY
and BRF format conversions because these formats cannot be used by the general
public.
10. To bring Bookshare to the attention of colleges and universities, most
Disability Services Center offices have a Director of Special Education and
their resource specialist or alternative media specialist.
11. To bring Bookshare to the attention of Schools and School Districts: They
generally don't have the resources to have their own office that specializes in
providing alternative accessible materials, especially the public schools.
Generally, by district, they have a Direct of Special Education, so that is
always a good person with whom to start. In many instances, I find that it
could be an itinerant visual impairment teacher that is the one who is the
squeaky wheel that gets a program such as Bookshare.org noticed and are
spreading the word to the district office of the Director of Special Education,
so many times, it comes from a teacher or even a parent who is the one
spreading the word about the services.
** Susie's Presentation:
** Groups Bookshare Serves: All types of groups that are serving individuals
with a variety of print disabilities: individual schools, school districts,
colleges, universities, assistive technology centers, rehabilitation centers,
and libraries, to name a few.
** Susie's Role: "I've been here for just a little over two years. I was
hired specifically to work with groups of all types that would like to work
with Bookshare who might be serving students, clients, or patrons who have
print disabilities. I spend a lot of my time advising and instructing staff
members and doing outreach regarding Bookshare and how Bookshare works with
different groups and institutions."
** Specialized Programs to Help Groups and Institutions: History and Overview
"Bookshare has had specialized programs set up to serve schools and groups for
a little over three years, and to my understanding, when Bookshare was quite
new, the team had learned that many of the folks that were having difficulties
getting access to accessible materials in digital format were educators and all
varieties of folks who might be serving individuals with print disabilities who
need alternative formats, so the Bookshare team looked into ways that they
could implement programs that would help those organizations specifically to
work with those that they served. These groups had to be separate from the
individual disabled patrons because the groups and organizations were made up
of people without print disabilities. On line at Bookshare, we have a
specialized section that addresses schools, groups, and institutions that want
to serve their members who are clients. We have updated that this year to help
people who are new to learning about accessible books and how Bookshare can
help them."
** Sources of Bookshare's Books
1. A large number of our books are scanned in and shared to Bookshare through
individual volunteers.
2. A large number of our volunteers have been educators who scan books in and
make them available to folks with whom they work and/or serve.
** Types of Books
1. We have a large number of books that are relative to students in
kindergarten through twelfth grade.
2. We also have post-secondary books. We are a great resource for those types
of institutions that need alternative materials who would rather not be
spending their time scanning in books and materials and would rather spend
their time teaching to work with those individuals.
** Two Standardized Group Programs
Since we are a small group, we have the flexibility of working more one on one
with groups that might have more specific needs, so we can also customize and
specialize programs for groups. For the most part, a large number of the
groups that we currently work with fall under one of the two standardized
programs that we already have set up that can be accessed from our general
Bookshare.org web site. I will explain the two programs and how a group might
choose one or a combination of the two.
1. The largest number of our groups have been implementing a program that we
at Bookshare call Institutional Access. On our web site, we refer to it now a
little bit more as a book package or purchasing of a block of books. For those
of you who are familiar with RFB&D, they have a similar model set up to serve
their schools and institutions. A school or institution would set up an
account with us. We can set up a specialized account for a school of any size,
a district, or a library, and then they would link their patrons or students to
their account. With the Institutional Access Program, this allows staff
members, educators, or anybody who is working with individuals or students who
want to serve these books to the students to have log-in information and access
to the Bookshare services to download books on behalf of their students and/or
their clients. This program allows an unlimited number of staff access to this
account as long as they agree to our terms. With this particular program, we
allow any number of students to be added, so this works really well for schools
that are really new to accessible books and how these books can be downloaded
and used with a variety of assistive technology. I personally have found over
the last two years that assistive technology and accessible E-books are still
something that is being learned across the country and is still new to many
folks. Before allowing students to have their own access to Bookshare, they
feel more comfortable with managing an account of their own and learning about
how to access Bookshare and how these books can be read back with a variety of
different assistive technology programs or devices. So they want to get
comfortable with the programs themselves and then serve their students with it.
They also feel that they would rather be directing the reading materials for
their students. Again, this program is called Institutional Access. The group
with the account downloads books on behalf of their students or their clients.
This program is specially made for those folks who want to manage, download,
and distribute books on behalf of and for their students and their clients. We
actually have three different packages available at this time that can be
chosen by whoever the primary accountholder is. These are annual renewal
memberships. Our DRM (Digital Rights Management) works very well with these
book package programs so that if a student were to redistribute a book or a
school were to redistribute a book (it is only supposed to go to the person to
whom it was given) we have our fingerprinting program, our watermark, and all
of that, so if you ever get asked about that, it does not give students the
right to redistribute those to their blind friends or to a friend who has
dyslexia, for example, who might request that of a student. That would violate
the DRM, and we make that very clear to schools. Any member who is under 18,
the adult flag is automatically set, and a school district cannot override
that. If parents were to purchase a subscription for their child, that is a
different story; I guess that it would be up to them, but within the school
packages, there are no books with the adult flag that they can download. We
have a special contract set up for schools and groups so that when the primary
contact of a school or group is setting up registration with us, they sign an
agreement that makes them understand that for the Bookshare files that they
download on behalf of and for their students or clients, they must register it
for them only and that those book files go through our DRM process. They are
watermarked with not only the school's information but also the particular
student for whom they would be downloading. Adult content cannot be accessed
by the students that groups register. If a retirement home wanted to have a
computer with a book package in their library, they could have many members,
and when their book package expires with their 60 books, then they would sign
up for another book package. Similarly, a community center that serves very
poor people might say that they have sponsor subscriptions for some of our
clients who come to the center and download the books that they want. There
are many ways that it can be used. If there is ever somewhere that you want to
go and give a talk, we can help you by providing brochures and materials, and
Susie can have you go through your presentation with her, or Susie can even be
on the phone. Tiffany is our summer intern who is helping with outreach. She
will be here through the fall, so we literally can offer you personnel
resources to assist you. If it is not too far away, we can even travel.
Thirty, sixty, or one hundred books is the entirety of the book package for the
entire school or the district that has set up an account, and I know it sounds
like a small amount, but many times, schools have a very small number of
students that they are serving, and occasionally we might only have a couple of
books that they need that are on their reading list for that year, but the
number of books is fixed for whatever account that they set up, whether it is
just one school or even a district. These accounts are appealing for those
schools who are very new to adaptive technology, but mid-year, they may come to
us and say that they used up their 30 books, wanting to upgrade to the next
level, and Bookshare is happy to do that as well.
A. A 30-book package is $300.
B. A 60-book package is $450.
C. A 100-book package is $600.
2. The other standard program that we have that serves schools and groups is
what we call Sponsoring Subscriptions for their students or their clients.
This allows a school, as with institutional access book packages, to set up an
account in our system, but they would want to sponsor memberships, which means
that they would pay for an account for their student. This will give their
student their own liberties and their own access to Bookshare.org, and this
would give the student or the client their own log-in information. That gives
the students and clients more liberties to the entire library. It allows them
to browse through book searches just like they would a book store or library,
just as many of individual Bookshare members do. Sometimes schools want to pay
for that and monitor their roster of students, so they might want to set their
students up with a sponsored account. The price for sponsored subscriptions is
the same as our regular individual subscriptions. For brand-new students, just
as for brand-new individual members, it is $75. For renewals every year
thereafter, it's $50. These are annual renewal memberships. If a school has
only one student and that student only needs one book, I will direct the school
to do a sponsor account for that student rather than for the school to buy one
book, which would be too much administration on our side. That is a little bit
more economical for the school, and then it also allows full access to the
repository, so that is a little bit of a work-around right now at this time.
3. A Combination of Book Packages and Sponsorships. Schools can actually set
up the program so they can serve their students with both of these methods.
Sometimes we have an entire school district that sets up services with us.
Sometimes they feel that the younger or primary grade level students may be
very new to technology and may not be completely comfortable with the Internet
and assistive technology yet, so the school district might want to set up a
book package where the teachers and the staff can be downloading books and
managing those for their younger grade level students. They might have high
school students who are very comfortable with using the Internet and E-mail and
might already be implementing and using some assistive technology software or
some devices and might be avid readers as well, so the school district could
also set up some sponsored subscriptions for those particular students. One
example is the Florida School for the Blind, and they are doing something just
like this. They are going to sponsor subscriptions to about 100 students, but
for their younger-level students, they want to purchase a book package so that
they can manage that for those younger-level students who are still learning
and getting up and running with assistive technology and understanding what
accessible E-books are. More can be learned about this at our Bookshare.org
web site.
4. Flexibility. Sometimes school districts are so large that they need more
than a 100-book package. We can also customize and specialize programs and
packages for schools and institutions of different types based on what their
needs may be as well. If the account holder is serving a large group, or if a
library wants to serve 400 qualified patrons, and they know that their patrons
are going to be really excited about Bookshare, we can customize programs that
may extend further than a year, or they might have a larger book package.
There is a variety of things that we can do. We are not necessarily always
locked into these standard programs that I mentioned earlier. As you are
talking to your friends and organizations, we like to be flexible, and we want
to work with individuals, groups, and those who are serving others to serve
their needs best.
** Collections for Schools: Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade
1. The Newberry Award winners.
2. We have some lists that can be accessed from our site that are teacher
recommended reading lists, and those are also listed by grade level. We have
everything from the beginning reading books for kindergartners and those just
getting started to upper levels and post-secondary as well.
3. Go to Bookshare and type in the title or author 24-7 as long as you have
access to the Internet and see if we have the book for which you are looking.
A lot of schools, organizations, and libraries don't know that.
4. We have thousands and thousands of kindergarten- through-
twelfth-grade-relative literature and novels, a lot of supplementary reading,
nonfiction, trade books, pleasure reading, and leisure reading.
** Collections for the Future for Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade: We don't
like to say that we are going to have all the core curriculum textbooks that
schools might be looking for, and that is something that we're really gearing
up toward acquiring more of in the future. We have a lot of potential toward
getting more core curriculum textbooks that schools need in the future because
of a federal mandate that has come into play in the last year called the NIMAS
Initiative. NIMAS is an acronym that stands for National Instructional
Materials Accessibility Standard. That is something that the kindergarten
through 12 school system is initiating, which is asking publishers actually to
create accessible versions in digital format for core curriculum textbooks that
can be deposited into one repository, if you will, and that repository is
called the NIMAC, which stands for National Instructional Materials
Accessibility Center. These books have been being deposited in this center as
of, I believe, last August or September, so any core curriculum textbooks that
have been published after that date should be deposited in this repository in
this standardized format, which is a version of DAISY, and it is DAISY digital
text. Our CEO Jim Fruchterman has been on the NIMAS Technical Committee, and
Bookshare is what is called an accessible media producer that will be part of
the distribution of these books, which means that we will help convert books
into accessible formats for schools, state education agencies, and local
education agencies that need to access these core curriculum textbooks. This
is all still rolling out; the repository is not completely filled up with these
core curriculum textbooks, but it is very exciting to us because as we work
more and more with states and different local education agencies that might be
requesting us to convert these books in accessible formats, we will be adding
these core curriculum textbooks into our repository. A word of caution is in
order, however. This is a hotly debated topic in Washington. We will
certainly be able to serve those students whose school district requests that
we provide a given book, but right now, the debate seems to be leaning against
our being able to add that book to the repository so that all of our members
could access it. Jim is fighting for that, and I hope that it happens. The
way that it works now is that if a school textbook for French 1, then they have
purchased that textbook for their classroom, and they can request a copy of
that textbook in an accessible format because they have a student who
qualifies.
** Post-secondary Collections: We also have hundreds of post-secondary
textbooks for colleges and universities. One of the ways in which we have been
acquiring these books is that we have a specialized program that we have been
implementing for a while now. Many colleges and universities have Disability
Services Centers that are scanning in books as students may be requesting them.
They are building their own collections of scanned-in and accessible books.
Bookshare has set up a program which we call the Post-secondary Sharing Program
that allows these colleges and universities to share their scanned-in books
with us, and in return for sharing their books with us, we are very happy to
give them credits for book downloads or subscriptions. Due to this program, we
actually have been speedily adding post-secondary textbooks to our collections,
which is quite exciting. We are currently doing that on a regular basis.
** Organizations' Material Accessed on Bookshare
If a dog guide school, for example, wanted its training material for students
to be accessed on Bookshare, they would have to send that material in to
Bookshare to be in the general collection for everyone to access; it would not
be available just to that organization's members. The exception is the NIMAC
repository where we are only allowed to serve districts that have already
purchased the book. If organizations have materials that they are willing to
make generally available should someone want to read them, then we certainly
could serve that need.
** Organizations Sponsoring Blocks of Memberships within a Certain Area
It might be possible, for example, for a Lions Club or other service group to
sponsor a group of people in a certain area and call that account by the name
of the sponsoring organization and area.
** Our Web Site
I encourage you to go to the Bookshare home page and in the main menu on our
page, in the last few months, we have added a specialized section for schools
and groups. Most of the information that I am giving you is on our home page.
There is an "About" page that will explain our services to schools, groups, and
universities. We recently did a complete redesign to the web site to help
streamline the process that a teacher, an educator, or library staff member
would go through when they are interested in setting up an account on line.
The registration process is a bit different from that for an individual who
might just come into Bookshare. It is quite automated for individuals, but
until earlier this year, that process for schools and groups really wasn't as
smooth and as automated as we would have liked, so we did a complete redesign,
and now we have a pretty smooth, step-by-step process for those individuals
serving their students or clients and who are interested in setting up an
account. Our web site also has a link to donate to Bookshare, and if there was
an organization that simply thought we were doing a great job and wanted to
donate money, that would be used for Bookshare.
** Donations: We don't have scholarship accounts per se, so in that case, it
would be better for the organizations to say, "We would like to offer these
scholarships to people in our county." We will publicize that, and then one of
the students or clients will approach Bookshare and say, "I've been awarded one
of these scholarships for Bookshare by the Lions Club," or something like that.
We certainly accept donations. We use them to buy books and other things for
Bookshare. We strongly encourage someone to donate a subscription for someone,
so they can call Susie, e-mail Lisa Friendly, or send mail to Mandy, who
handles our subscriptions. They can tell us that they would like to purchase a
subscription for a friend. That friend will have to give us a proof of
disability, but their subscription would be paid by the person who made the
donation, so it is very easy to pay for a subscription for someone else. It is
possible to donate grants to Bookshare, also.
** Groups with Accounts with Bookshare Cannot Redistribute Books
It would violate Bookshare's DRM to allow the groups, schools, and
organizations who have Bookshare accounts to allow these groups to build up
their own libraries and redistribute books to new students, just as individual
members cannot redistribute their books to friends or anyone else. The books
have to go to specific people. If another student needs to take that book out
of the library, maybe the library reference is more appropriate. That student
needs to download or borrow that book. We want to add the capability of buying
one book to our system. There is a fair amount of engineering involved so that
it won't be a lot of overhead for our staff, but interestingly, some of our
international partners have asked for that as well. We would like to be able
to have a certain fee, and that gets members ten books because it fits a model
that they have already in their digital library for the blind or something like
that.
** Group Accounts and Newspapers
Schools can access anything: newspapers, periodicals, anything in our
repository. If a school buys a book package that they want to manage the
downloads for their patrons, clients, or students, a newspaper will not count
against their book package, so they can download those without being docked
against their number of books that they have purchased for the year.
** A School Can Submit Books Without Buying A Membership
Schools certainly can contribute their books. In fact, Jim also just gave us a
clarification on this. They may contribute to Bookshare the books that they
scanned for their students because they are a qualified entity under Chafee.
Those students may not contribute to Bookshare the books that were provided to
them by the school. There are certain formats that we can work with and
certain ones that we can't. Our favorite format is RTF. We just had a very
nice gift of books from Michigan State University of books in RTF format. The
only kind of books that we are not allowed to accept are plays unless the
publisher specifically gives us permission. For some reason, they are exempt.
Schools can earn a membership, but they don't have to be members to contribute
books if they have them in RTF, Word, well-tagged PDF, and any kind of XML. We
would be happy to take schools' scanned-in books. I have a guideline document
that schools can follow that can help schools, colleges, and universities
understand the formats that we can take. It would be great if they would be
interested in sharing their books with us so that they can be shared with
schools across the country. Many workers in disability offices don't take
their students' word for it, so you are welcome to give them Susie's contact
information.
** Submission Credit for Groups
If a school submits a chunk of books to us, say ten books, that might offer
them one sponsored subscription, or if a school offers us a certain chunk of
books, then that would earn them a certain chunk of downloads depending on
which one they would want. Schools can submit a chunk of books to us on CD as
long as the format is one covered in our guidelines. Then we can credit them
for those. We are strict about the formats that we will accept; otherwise, the
quality of the collection would degrade. We cannot accept untagged PDF because
conversion to XML would be no navigation.
** Students' Special Book Requests
If a student needs to read a certain book that is not in the collection, the
book can be sent to Bookshare to be scanned in, or Bookshare may also be able
to purchase the book if the student is unable to get the print book. Then
Bookshare will purchase and scan the book, then add it to the collection.
** Turnaround Time for Scanning Needed Books
We scan books on a priority basis. If there is a date-driven need, we scan and
add those books faster, but the book can be added once Bookshare has it within
four to five days. For textbooks, try NIMAC first because textbooks are hard
to scan with good quality. We can do them if there aren't a lot of graphics
and tables.
** Accelerating Reading and Advanced Placement Book Lists
We do not have any at-a-glance lists that can be downloaded or looked at on our
site where people can just see those right away. We have many of those books,
but we need to start making these lists for kindergarten through twelfth grade.
We have some lists of top recommended reading and books. Bowling Green
University did a huge research program on what accessible resources such as
Bookshare have what books and the top 100 teacher recommended reading books.
There is a percentage of books that we don't have. Carrie, one of the staff
members, will add the books needed on this list. If you have friends or
children whom you want to help with reading and you can give Bookshare a list
of those books, they can purchase, scan, and get those books into the
collection, or the volunteers could scan them and put them in the collection.
** Susie's Contact Information:
susie.m@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Phone: 1-650-644-3433
** Lisa's Contact Information:
lisa.f@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Phone: 1-650-644-3420.
Lisa has been promoted to Director of Operations for Bookshare.
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