Hi, Jackie. I decided to reply to you on the list in case it would
help anyone else. I see the role of a validater as one who verifies
the integrity of a book and who polishes raw scans. According to the
Bookshare policies, validaters are not required to serve as full
blown proofreaders, examining every line of every page for things
like spacing, fonts, or margins. Those who choose to do so are doing
so because they believe it is important, and yet it is a choice made
out of personal preference. Some of the books I take are easy to
validate while I spend several hours on others. It also helps that
I tend to validate books by a group of submitters and know the
personal quirks and habits of each. For one thing, I often validate
books by listening to them while I scan another book in express batch
mode with Openbook. I do that with books that interest me, and it's
easy to fix errors as I go.
When I see the rating of a book on the step 1 page, I know it's not
always accurate because a person is guessing at which quality rating
applies. So I approach each book the same way in the beginning. I
check on the copyright info first and then make sure there are page
breaks. I generally approach a book by doing a spell check, deleting
headers if they're really messed up, and look for common scannos. I
don't spend time lining up paragraphs and margines or going line by
line through the book to look for stray blank lines. I do fix
hyphenated words when I come across them. If I'm interested in the
book, I read and correct things as I go along. For books that I
don't enjoy reading, I do the things I've described above and upload
the book if it's in nice shape. Some of the people on this list are
far more willing to fix margines and spaces. I make sure the book is
pleasant to read, but I don't spend hours on each book trying to line
things up perfectly. I hope this helps and makes some sense.
Monica Willyard
Monica,
How do you get through the validations so fast? Do you spell-check, or do you assume that if it says "excellent" quality, it is? I must be too much a perfectionist, because it takes me quite a long time to do a book. I tend to make the indexes and bibliographies start each new entry at the margin, etc. So would you write me off-list and tell me how you validate so fast? I would appreciate it.
- Jackie McCraw
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:plumlipstick@xxxxxxxxxx>Monica Willyard
To: <mailto:bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 2:19 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: just submitted 9 books
>Star Trek! Wahoo! There's nothing like taking a break from
>validating textbooks to indulge in a little shoot 'em up starship
>action... with Captain Kirk and Vulcan prisoners no
>less. (grin) Beam me up, Scotty. And yes, I've probably had too
>much coffee today.
Monica Willyard
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