[bksvol-discuss] Re: **text Quality**
- From: talmage@xxxxxxxxxx
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 11:02:09 -0400
At 10:49 PM 4/28/2004, you wrote:
>This without doubt is my biggest issue with bookshare. The "fair rating."
>In my experience, anything marked fair is usually almost unreadable.
I agree with the overall sentiment of what you are saying, but there are
always exceptions to any rule.
Some books are still rated fair as a result of the bug that existed in the
Bookshare rating system a while back;
Some books are rated fair because of numerous foreign language words, and a
poor job by the person who edited the submission in not catching this and
boosting the rating;
Some are rated fair because the headers and footers didn't scan well and
weren't stripped out, but the text may deserve a good rating;
Some books may have instances of hand written letters inserted which may
not seriously impact the overall readability of the book;
Some books may be accurate reflections of the written text, but by todays
standards of spelling and grammar may get a fair rating;
and, some books may be so old and rare that you can't find them elsewhere,
but you can only get a fair rating out of them.
Perhaps Bookshare should also have a poor rating for the really bad scans,
but where the books may still have some redeeming qualities.
>To the people who say, "having the book is better then no book at all," I
>say, you are outright wrong!!"
I have to say, that 1 word "wrong", was probably the only reason I decided
to respond to this message.
As the saying goes, "different strokes for different folks." I may like
single malt scotch, while you may not, but this doesn't make you
wrong. It's called a different opinion.
While I may not read books with a fair rating often, there have been
occasions where I have because they may have been the only copy I could
find available.
Personally, I hate braille, and wouldn't even consider reading anything
longer than a label in that form; likewise, I no longer listen to tape
books as I can kill a cassette player probably quicker then anyone you have
ever met.
It also used to drive me crazy trying to coax a tape along that wasn't
cooperating, or getting to tape 4, of a 6 tape set only to find it was useless.
Ultimately, I would like to see Bookshare start a program aimed at
improving the quality of the collection. Maybe have a separate download
section for the volunteers where the books rated fair could be rescanned to
improve the quality.
In closing, I have to add, that after using a KRM model 400 for years, even
some of the books rated fair on Bookshare are an improvement.
Dave
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