[bksvol-discuss] Very Outdated Bookshare Listings on NLS
- From: "Evan Reese" <mentat1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 18:09:14 -0700
I noticed some months ago that the listings that come up doing searches on the
NLS site with "all" in the Locations field contained Bookshare listings that
were outdated, meaning that books that I knew were in Bookshare's collection
were not listed there. I just checked it again this afternoon, and those
listings don't seem to have changed at all! I joined Bookshare in mid-January,
and my first submission was added to the collection on January 20, but that
book does not come up on the NLS site. In fact, none of the books I have
submitted or validated since then appear there. I know of one book -
"Redemption Ark" by Alastair Reynolds which was published here before I joined
that does not appear there. So unless the books I have submitted or validated
are being specifically excluded somehow, the listings that come up on NLS site
with respect to Bookshare books are at least six months out of date.
This is not an idle complaint. I was attracted to Bookshare because I found
books listed in my NLS searches as being from Bookshare that I was very
interested in reading. The original reason I had set Location to "all" in the
search was mainly to net books from RFB&D without having to go and do the same
search up there. I had heard of Bookshare from another source, but did not pay
much attention until I began finding interesting listings in the NLS search
results. I would be very surprised if other people did not have a similar
story.
I want Bookshare to grow, and I assume that the people who work for Bookshare
would also like it to grow. The more members it has, the more submissions from
more people with diverse interests. Also, many of these people may become
volunteers and can help get more books of high quality into the collection.
Bookshare has added about 2000 books in the time I have joined, which are
probably not coming up in any search results of potential new members. As I
say, I don't know how many potential members that would be, but it seems to me
that it is unlikely that I would be the only person that came to Bookshare as a
result of seeing books of interest in NLS search results.
I also don't know who on the staff would be responsible for looking into this,
but I would expect that someone up there would be interested in seeing why they
are so far out of date. This would seem to be one of those processes that
could be automated. It doesn't sound unreasonable to expect to have monthly or
even weekly updates, at night when Net traffic is low. Especially now that we
have the NY Times bestsellers in the collection, I would bet that that would
attract some people who don't want to wait for NLS to get them out. Also, I
know how impatient I can be when a new book in a series is out and I don't want
to wait the interminable-seeming time for it to finally come out on tape. I am
sure that there others who feel the same. If people who are not members of
Bookshare see that these kinds of books are available here, they may be
motivated to join up.
Of course, this all assumes that at least some people will change the default
setting in NLS searches from "NLS Only" to "all", and I don't know how many
people that would be. But nevertheless, I would think that Bookshare would
want to have more current listings than six months old. Why bother to have
this relationship with NLS if the listings are going to be that far behind?
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