[bksvol-discuss] letter I sent
- From: Ann Parsons <akp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Volunteers, Bookshare" <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:30:40 -0400
Hi all,
I did as I promised. I have sent a letter. I have three addresses for NW.
<smiling> One is a University addy, which I didn't use, but the others are
not. I have written the following message. Perhaps I shouldn't have done
this, but I have done it, so it's finished. If I have overstepped my bounds, I
am sorry, Pavi, but this just made me so upset! I have included the text of my
missive below. <smiling> All criticisms and flames about this should go to me
privately, OK? We don't need to tie up the list by castigating this old
busy-body. I do hope that you all will take this missive in the spirit in
which it has been written. I wrote it privately because I didn't think NW was
on the list here. Here it is. Remember, all flames go to me privately.
Ann P.
Good morning Nick,
I'm writing to you as an unofficial representative of the community of
volunteers for Bookshare. The reason I'm writing to you is to ask you politely
to stop pushing books through the Bookshare process in such a short time. You
and another volunteer have made many of us extremely upset letely because of
the way in which you handle your proofreading duties for Bookshare.
We have noticed that you have been taking book after book after book from the
Check-out queue and downloading them and then reuploading them in an extremely
short time. For example, you recently took a book scanned by Jamie Yates and
downloaded it, then reuploaded it in four minutes and eleven seconds. Nick,
this is way, way too short a time to proofread a book for bookshare. You
cannot even check for title, author and copyright information in that length of
time.
Moreover, you make the meticulous, time-consuming work done by others a
mockery. This is not fair for several reasons. First, it's not fair to your
fellow volunteers because what you are doing is taking books and just
reuploading them without taking any time at all to proofread them, these books
are uploaded without careful reading or careful proofing. this makes a lot of
people upset because you're depleting the checkout queue so that others who
really want to do the job right can't do it. Secondly, since the books you
push through the system aren't truly prooofed, they go onto the library without
the second go-through characteristic of good proofing. Nick, I have spent the
past month reading through a book which I checked out. This book has caused me
no end of difficulty because it has many, many blank pages and there are some
errors that need to be corrected. However, by the time I do upload that book,
it will be right, and I can be proud of what I have done. The third and most
important reason why what you are doing is unfair, is that it's ultimately
unfair to the readership. If they get a book which has been railroaded through
the system by you, they get a book that has not been proofread. Consequently,
any metadata on the condition of that book is false or at least misleading. It
may have missing pages, it may have garbled pages. It may have page headers
that need to be removed. It may have information that is missing, captions for
photos that are missing, any number of scanos which would be caught by a
proofreader who took his or her job seriously. That, my friend, damages the
reputation of Bookshare! People won't join the library if they can't count on
finding good, error-free books. You, my friend, are damaging a dream! Yes,
you are damaging a precious dream that is like a porcelin vase. Don't smash
it! Don't destroy it!
Finally, young man, no amount of credit for a subscription to Bookshare is
worth obtaining under false pretenses. If you don't proof your books, then you
are getting that credit falsely. That's a lie. If there's one thing in this
world I can't abide, it's a liar! You, sir, are one, and will remain one,
until or unless you clean up your act. Pavi's written to you, and I trust that
you will pay attention to whatever she's said. I'm writing to you because as a
concerned member of the community I'm writing as one of your peers to put a
leetle more pressure on you to sit up and fly straight. Believe me, Nick, if
you joined the bks-vol list, like you should, you will hear what others have to
say about you. They aren't please, and they aren't amused. So, get your act
together! If you want to proof books, join the bks-vol list, read the manual,
and finally, if you can't or won't proofread the books you download, then don't
bother doing it at all. Do it right or don't do it!
Ann P.
--
AAnn K. Parsons
Portal Tutoring
Email: akp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web Site: http://www.portaltutoring.info
blog: http://www.samobile.net/users/akp
Skype: Putertutor
"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost." JRRT
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