Can't books be navigated by chapter and sectiontoo like RFB&D does? That would make as much since. Not all books need page breaks. I personally find them irritating. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mary Otten" <maryotten@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, December 10, 2004 10:48 AM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: question: Re: page breaks > I suppose this has been hashed and rehashed while I was off the list. But I can't let pass a categorical statement like the one Guido made that books with no page breaks must be rejected as unnavigable. Do I really > need to navigate a novel? I want to read it, not necessarily know what page or paragraph or whatever I'm on right now. remember that people used talking books for literally decades and had absolutely no clue where > they were with respect to the printed text, yet they got a whole lot of enjoyment out of those books and continue to do so to this day, despite the fact that they don't know what page they're on. > I can certainly take a book that has no page breaks in it and navigate within it well enough to find my place when I want to pick up where I left off. If I'm reading with a portable device like the Bookport or courier, the > reading will automatically pick up where I stopped, and I can make bookmarks. If reading with K1000, I can place some sort of symbol where I stopped and can search for it when I next open the file, unless, of course, > I've changed the book into a kes in which case, K1k will pick up where I left off without my having to do anything. If I'm using Word to read, I can make a book mark or use some symbol that I can come back to. And > that's pretty much all that's wanted when reading for pleasure, which is what generally happens with contemporary novels. If one wanted to make a case for rejection of books that have no page breaks when those > books are apt to be used as reference, I could see the point. Although, frankly, I'd rather see even books of that nature accepted, but with some notation that let people know that breaks were absent. Then they > could become like the fair rated ones, put on a list and be up for rescan by willing volunteers. > I think the problem here is that BookShare is attempting to serve clients with vastly different requirements and tolerance levels. If I'm a student and get a book without accurate pagination, and I want to use that for > reference, I'm out of luck and have to get that book from some other source. But if I'm not a student and just want to read, and BookShare has a policy that says, sorry, no books will be accepted without page breaks, > then they've just deprived me of something that would be perfectly usable for my purposes and ensured that I have to go forth and scan or do without. I don't think there is a solution that is going to please everybody, > just as there is no hard and fast line for text quality, below which, all books must be rejected due to unreadability. I hope, at this Monday meeting, there will be serious consideration given to a nuanced approach to this > problem, rather than allowing an arbitrary decision that causes automatic rejection of anything that lacks the page breaks. Do that, and you should also reject anything that's not excellent text quality as well. > Mary > > > >