[bksvol-discuss] Re: synopses, quality, etc.

  • From: Guido Corona <guidoc@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 11:52:15 -0500

Assuming a redesign of the database is feasible, or even advisable,  one 
possible way to handle a single synopsis is to have only a long synopsis, 
which is viewed in its entirety when displaying the book record.  The same 
long synopsis would instead be displayed in a truncated form on multiple 
book listings pages.

This would simplify the life of volunteers,  while still presenting 
subscribers with a highly usable  and flexible interface.

Guido

Guido


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





"Sarah Van Oosterwijck" <curiousentity@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
Sent by: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
04/29/2004 11:08 AM
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[bksvol-discuss] Re: synopses, quality, etc.






Personally, I like having the ability to see a long synopsis when it is
available, so I would be disappointed to see it illiminated.  I just 
wanted
to give my opinion in this unofficial and unsolicited E-mail poll. :-)

Thank you for your answer about the textarea tag.  Some html guides online
must be incorrect, which I suspected since my tests with it didn't work.
Could you tell me if there is a reason why textarea is used instead of 
input
when input would allow for easy limiting of the number of characters
entered? I know there may very well be a good reason for the other tag 
that
I just don't know about. I know it will allow 200 characters as a length,
because I tested that.
Thanks.

Sarah Van Oosterwijck
curious entity at earthlink dot net


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jesse Fahnestock" <Jesse.F@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 9:06 AM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] synopses, quality, etc.


> Hey all -- sorry I've been offline for some lively conversation! I'll 
try
to weigh in where necessary. As always, please feel free to email me 
offline
about any of these issues.
>
> 1. Synopses: Just to be clear, while I understand the desire for 
synopses,
books missing one or both forms of synopsis should not be rejected on that
basis, by volunteer or administrator. I have no problem with the urging 
and
cajoling of our fellow volunteers to include them, but making them 
mandatory
would simply be prohibitive and discouraging for some of our submitters,
especially those who submit in bulk.
>
> 2. The synopsis bug: There are a few cases where the synopsis being
entered will not stick: namely, books that have previously been submitted
and approved, whether or not they have since been withdrawn. In those 
cases
the original synopses will stick. Validators are able to change the 
synopses
on brand new submissions, however, so please don't be discouraged! The 
vast
majority of your synopses are sticking. We're working on fixing it for 
books
that have already existed on Bookshare.org, but it's been a tricky one.
>
> 3. Synopses from other sources: please do not copy synopses from
Amazon.com or any other source, unless it is the same copy found on the 
book
jacket. That is copyrighted material, and while it is "quotable" in a news
context (like Alison's newsletter) it should not be used as the synopsis 
in
our collection.
>
> 4. Site improvements: the categories issue is a long-standing one, and 
one
we've spent a lot of time trying to plan for. While we do acknowledge the
need for better category management, making changes would require a large
amount of database work (not to mention likely manual recategorization),
and, if it were not a completely robust solution, might need to be done 
over
and over again. The full-scale answer is to change our metadata source
entirely to something like what the library of congress uses. This change 
is
probably a ways out still, but given our limited resources, it probably
makes more sense to make that change once rather than try to take
half-steps.
>
> The notification for users of rejection reasons is on the way, I'm told.
Look for it in a rejection notice coming to you soon! (grin)
>
> The short synopsis field is a textarea field, and that does not accept 
the
maxlength attribute. As Sara (I think) noted, fixing the length would
require javascript, which is problematic for many users. I will float the
idea for a single synopsis -- keep in mind that this will be displayed on
the search results page, however, so it would still need to be pretty
limited. You couldn't have a 100-word synopsis there.
>
> 5. Regarding text quality: I love the fact that this group has high
standards -- I'm consistently amazed at the effort being put into the 
scans
of others by our volunteers. But I'd encourage us to try to avoid 
accusatory
messages when it comes to text quality. There are many mitigating factors,
some of which have already been pointed out here, and we would be wrong to
discourage anyone from submitting the books they want to share. So let's
focus on ensuring the readability and legibility of what has been 
submitted,
and of course encouraging our fellow scanners with tips and techniques as
many of us already do.
>
>
> ________________________
>
> Jesse Fahnestock
> Collection Development Coordinator, Bookshare.org
> www.bookshare.org
>
> A Project of The Benetech Initiative - Technology Serving Humanity
> 480 S. California Ave., Suite 201
> Palo Alto, CA 94306-1609  USA
> (650)475-5440 x133
> (650) 475-1066 FAX
> jesse@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> www.benetech.org
>

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