[bookshare-discuss] Re: FW: [bksvol-discuss] My nickel's worth--quality control
- From: "James Bond" <wildblinker007@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 22:05:21 -0800
I have to agree. I have scanned a grand total of one book. I would like to
add that this book is quite possibly one of the greatest and most overlooked
books that I have ever read in my entire life. But I cannot, and will not
submit it to bookshare, for the simple reason that the quality is not just
bad, but is in fact actively embarrassing. Whole pages are reduced to
braces, "s and other garbage characters. I cannot find a single page that
does not have at least one error. Going trough and fixing even close to all
of them would be not only tedious, but also may be impossible as I need to
know what it was actually trying to say before I can fix it. If I am ever
going to even think of submiting it to bookshare--and i am, as it is truly a
wonderful book that is hard to find for *anyone*, let alone a blind
person--than I will simply re-scan it with my new scanner and new Open Book
program, and make sure that each page is relatively error-free before
continuing. Its find to have a whole bunch of books in your collection, but
when most of them have portions that are wholly ilegible, the point becomes
rather moot. I have seen at least one book--The Outsiders, by S.E.
Hinton--where whole pages were excised--for no reason that I can tell, I've
seen five pages at a time just not included in the text. Even two pages of
missing text can--and was--crippling to my understanding of the book, as it
skipped over several key plot points. This just cannot go on.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Liz Halperin" <lizzers@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Bookshare" <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 2:21 PM
Subject: [bookshare-discuss] FW: [bksvol-discuss] My nickel's worth--quality
control
> Ok, I suspect I may get bashed, but here goes anyway:
>
> I wish everyone would just SLOW DOWN. There seems to be this frenzy to
> get books into the collection, and less care on their quality. As a
> braille reader, I know I am in the minority, but my patience for sloppy
> books is low.
>
> When I scan a book I am very careful to send a clean copy up. I don't
> expect the validator to have to do much of anything except make sure no
> corruption of the file has occurred. I am proud of quality over
> quantity.
>
> I have been doing some validating and there have been a few books
> equally clean as those I submit. They are a joy to validate. Most have
> problems. I fix what I can. Books are submitted without the ISBN listed
> (even though it's right there), sections missing, whole messed up pages.
> When I am faced with many blank pages and then text pages run together
> and too many spelling errors and character errors, I feel no guilt to
> reject the book. It's not worth spending so many hours on. Better to get
> it rescanned in a better version. When I finally validate something,
> it's clean and ready to go. Any problems after that are from the
> Bookshare conversion processes.
>
> With over 500 books waiting for validation, I wish there would be a
> moratorium on scanning submissions. When there was too much backlog at
> the Bookshare end, they made a concerted effort to get caught up. It's
> now OUR end that needs the effort, the volunteers.
>
> The two lists, books-volunteer-discuss and books-discuss, are very very
> busy. What if all the time spent reading and writing on the lists was
> spent on validating, for awhile, at least?
>
> What if scanners made an effort to send up better quality? What if
> validators had better quality to start with and so could approve faster
> and cleaner? What if we humans went beyond spellcheck and made sure that
> other errors were caught? Errors such as "form" for "from" and "end" for
> "and" and stuff like that? What if we went for quality over quantity
> for awhile?
>
> Liz in Seattle
>
> Liz Halperin
> Seattle, WA
> lizzers@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
>
>
>
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