Two hundred characters is not enough for a comments dialog. Those cryptic
comments on the step 1 page are not what I mean. I mean something like.
"Book contains lots of linefeeds in the middle of sentences. Table of
contents needs rescanning. Lots of number errors such as z for 2 i for 1
and o for 0 resulting in things like izio for the date 1215."
Admittedly this is a long comment but sometimes people can be saved a lot
of up front work by good running comments on a book.
Please give me an idea of what you are getting at here. What might a
submitter say for example? Sounds like you are saying have commentary from
the submitter about
the book.
At 10:09 PM 9/1/2005, you wrote:
E, your suggestions and my comments.
It is possible that these might be remedied by changes to either the bookshare site or the site which includes "no book left behind".
Bottleneck 1. the endless renewal of a book for validating by the same individual. I do not know what is going on here exactly. Either you are working on a book or you are not. I can understand some books taking a very long time, sometimes a month or two. I have had this example. Shurely a 90 day limit on a renewal by the same individual would work. It could be waived by administrative approval.
Note: This is not a lot different than getting approval for downloading more than 100 books per month.
bottleneck 2. loss of knowledge of a book and its needs during the validation process. I take a copy of a book to validate. I learn its quirks. For one reason or another I release it. My knowledge is lost to the next validator. There could be a comments field which I could fill out (optionally) when I release a book. The knowledge would possibly be useful to future validators. If bookshare itself is not interested in doing this (or cannot do so financially), perhaps it could be part of the "no book left behind" program. I am going for increased efficiency of the validation process here not who puts it on whose site. The point is to have a running commentary about a specific book available for a validator.
Note: this is not difference than the admins do when a book is kicked back to the download page. When you release a book you would have 200 characters to make comments.
bottleneck 3. quality of input. The better the original scan the faster the validation work.
If you have an older version of k1000, the upgrade to version 10 will cost you around a hundred dollars. The tools you will get increase your power as a submitter or validator by creating a better product.
Note: this may work though there are many of those who use the site that for one reason or another can't afford to get upgrades. One thing that might help in this area would be to strongly encourage comments from the scanner on the quality beyond the three. Maybe a multiple list of aspects of the uploaded book that could be included in the book description.
Kaitlyn :)
