[bksvol-discuss] Re: bookshare-discuss] no mor share in Bookshare...book.org
- From: talmage@xxxxxxxxxx
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:24:49 -0500
I agree, I don't believe there will ever be a time when all
publishers willingly, cheerfully, or otherwise provide all their
books to Bookshare, and even if they did, Bookshare would want, or
could deal, with them. We've all seen the growing pains associated
with trying to incorporate the most recent PQ books, and I suspect
they are from just 1 or 2 sources. Imagine the fun the staff would
have sorting and dealing with raw files from thousands of publishers,
with all the different formats, languages, operating systems,
etc. Aside from that, consider the millions of books that are no
longer in-print, which may never see another publishing run.
Dave
At 01:11 AM 3/7/2008, you wrote:
Hi Lizzi,
I think that having PQ books at our disposal would be great.
However, I don't think that all publishers will give their books to
Bookshare. Even if this does happen, we could get involved in other
things and still have a community. For example, we could have more
reading clubs, educate teachers and others about how to use and
access electronic material. I am amazed about how many people who
could use audio and/or electronic material don't even know about it.
We, as a group, are highly computer literate and adaptive in our
lives. Most people, I have found are not like that and marvel at
the fact that I read material differently. Even if our scanning and
validating days end, there is so much as a community that we could
do to help people adapt to having a print challenge. Personally, I
think that it would be wonderful to have all PQ books and if this
were to happen, I would be eager to move into other areas that
would benefit others. For me, scanning books is laborious and I
would be happy to see other ways to get the material we need in a
quick manner. I love this group and I hope that it will never end.
Being part of this group, makes me feel normal about having a vision
disability and having to read books through non-traditional means.
Barbara
Estelnalissi <airadil@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear Booksharian friends,
We're growing and changing all right, and while I can, I'm enjoying
scanning and validating enormously.
Geoff was musing, acknowledging PQ books can be good and speculating
there may come a day when we no longer need to scan books, and to
that, I added "or validate, either."
In the spirit of musing, the thought trickled by that no more
scanning or validating would put an end to the original concept of
blind people and other reading challenged people sharing their hard
won scans and validations with one another. What started as
Bookshare.org, when all additions are of PQ books only will become
Book.org, or, with all the additional staff, they'll generate a
totally new name, blank.org, formerly known as Bookshare.org and
finally blank.org with Bookshare a memory descended below the
horizon. Whatever the name, we can hope the books will have some
sort of synopses and be braille accessible with conversions which
won't fry the brains of the braille readers or their adaptive technologies.
I really think everything will be all right, but musing happens.
Always with love,
Lissi
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:GeoffsLists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>Geoff Stephens
To: <mailto:bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 10:30 PM
Subject: [bookshare-discuss] Re: Way To Go, Scott!
Updating the Web interface is trivial compared to the changes to the
back end necessary for such things as book conversions, etc. Still,
the uI for the service has needed ongoing enhancement which really
hasn't been addressed. this is really the easiest part of the process.
Do a book search and the results aren't organized in any logical
manner that makes navigation with a screen reader the least bit
intuitive. I'm not going to bother to try to get into all the
specifics about what needs to be done to the site here. it would
take some time. It is disappointing that sites designed
specifically for use by blind people don't implement the very
features we complain about every day with regard to many mainstream sites.
I don't know what I would do without it, but I shudder when I think
about all the duplication of effort of scanning content that is new
enough that it never gained the distinction of being typed or hand
written. I applaud the publisher quality effort and hope we can
eventually completely eliminate the need to scan books.
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