[bksvol-discuss] Re: quality and compairisons
- From: "Paula Muysenberg" <outofsightlife@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 16:49:49 -0500
Regarding book quality, it was brought to my attention several months ago
that the Narnia books currently on Bookshare have a lot of mistakes. I think
they are rated Excellent, but contain errors, such as Asian instead of Aslan.
I downloaded A Horse and His Boy, with the intention of fixing it, but
found another problem. The page breaks appear to be in different places from
the page numbers. I was unable to find the particular series that is on
Bookshare, so can't correct this problem. It is a series that has been
renumbered, so that the books are in chronological order, which, according to
the publisher, was C. S. Lewis's wish.
I have a lot of books that I've already scanned, and need to proofread, so
I'm not up for rescanning all seven Narnia books. I would be glad to do some
carefully chosen Find and Replace operations on these books, and they would be
in much better shape than they are now. My question is: Should I do that, or is
someone interested in rescanning the Narnia series?
The person who alerted me to this problem was especially annoyed, because
these books are read by a lot of children. Although the Narnia books are
available on Web Braille, it would be nice if children who get them from
Bookshare could have accurate copies. I'm afraid some users are getting a bad
impression of Bookshare, because some books with Excellent ratings were not
checked thoroughly enough.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Paula
----- Original Message -----
From: Guido Corona
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 1:46 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: quality and compairisons
No, the repository in question is not Gutemberg. I am not comparing apples
to oranges.
G.
Guido D. Corona
IBM Accessibility Center, Austin Tx.
IBM Research,
Phone: (512) 838-9735
Email: guidoc@xxxxxxxxxxx
Visit my weekly Accessibility WebLog at:
http://www-3.ibm.com/able/weblog/corona_weblog.html
"Kellie Hartmann" <kellhart@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
06/16/2004 01:46 PM Please respond to
bksvol-discuss
To <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Subject [bksvol-discuss] quality and compairisons
Hi all,
Guido, you make an interesting point with the quality comparisons. The only
other repository I know is Gutenberg, and of course their texts are perfect,
or very very close to it. But one difference is that Gutenberg asks its
volunteers to do proofreading. In order to assure great quality *someone*,
be it submitter or validator, would have to read the book. Yes there can be
a lot done by the submitter to ensure that the scan is clean, all pages are
there, and most junk characters removed. But there are many mistakes that
aren't going to be caught by a spellchecker. I'm not saying that spellcheck
is not useful because clearly it is, but if people want there books to be as
perfect as Web Braille or Gutenberg then serious proofreading will have to
be done. I'm not writing this to discourage validators who work on books
without reading them, or submitters who unselfishly submit books they aren't
very interested infor the sake of the collection. I'm just acknowledging a
reality.
Kellie
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