hi, Lissi. That was a very well-thought-out and heart-felt letter, and I couldn't have said it better myself. Long live Bookshare!!!!
Shane At 12:59 AM 10/1/2007, you wrote:
Dear Jim Fruchterman, You have my heart-felt congratulations.From its inception, Bookshare under your guidance, has shown its quality. The steady growth of the Bookshare collection and membership has demonstrated that within the blind population there is a great demand for large numbers of books whose diversity is limited only by what is being, and has been, printed, bound, and published.Bookshare gives its books generously to its members, most of whom have felt reading deprived for most of their lives. You show confidence in their intellect and community spirit and invite them to add to their status as consumers by becoming contributors, making them part of the organization. You have such faith in them that you made voluntary investment of their resources, indispensable to Bookshare's success.And success Bookshare has had. Given the foundation of supportive staff and electronic tools born of your inventive intellect and optimistic insight, blind book lovers across the country responded by procuring books and equipment and learning the skills to prepare books to deliver to be transformed into formats friendly to fingers, ears and eyes, avidly eager to read for learning and pleasure. How did you know just the right blend of incentive, staff support, and structure for the volunteer community to inspire Booksharians of all ages across the country to enthusiastically build a collection approaching thirty-five thousand books?Yours is indeed a multifaceted genius. That you choose to dedicate your talents to the enrichment of those who can only access print books which have been specially modified, is a gift of vast goodness. The government chose well in awarding you funds to focus on making Bookshare's resources available to young students because you clearly have the skills and values to succeed with the job.The Department of Education exercised sound judgment by recognizing the potential of Bookshare, with you as its guiding force,with such a substantial funding award. I am so proud of you and proud to be a part of Bookshare. I can't even imagine the changes and improvements to come, but I know Bookshare will surely evolve to further enrich the lives of special needs readers.Always with love, Lissi ----- Original Message ----- From: <mailto:lisaf@xxxxxxxxxxxx>Lisa FriendlyTo: <mailto:bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ; <mailto:bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxSent: Sunday, September 30, 2007 10:21 PM Subject: [bookshare-discuss] Great news about Bookshare.org Forwarded from Jim Fruchterman: I'm happy to share incredible news, which will transform Bookshare.org. On Friday, the Office of Special Education Programs of the U.S. federal Department of Education made a major five-year award of $32 million to Bookshare.org. This funding is to fully support all schools and students with qualifying print disabilities in the United States, K-12 and post-secondary, with access to the entire Bookshare.org collection of accessible electronic books and to software for reading those books. As of October 1, 2007, we will cease charging these schools and students anything to join Bookshare.org as members. In this initial news flash, I can't begin to share with you all of our plans for Bookshare.org now with this funding. But, we are planning on adding more than 100,000 new educational books and materials to our existing collection of over 34,000 titles. We are going to reach out to every student, every family with a disabled student, and every school in the U.S. to offer them the chance to join the Bookshare.org community and transform the practice of making books accessible. We are going to coordinate with schools and publishers to deliver the best quality content possible and lower their costs in meeting our shared obligations to serve every student with a disability in the nation. We expect to provide millions of books to students through this new program over the next five years, at a tenth or less of the historical cost of providing these services. And, we expect our improvements to serve all of these students will make Bookshare.org better for all of our Bookshare.org users. Bookshare.org's track record of being highly responsive to our members will be enhanced with significant funding to implement major improvements to our content and services. Our volunteer community is an essential part of what made this grant possible, and you are a crucial part to making this a success in the future. Your commitment to our shared vision of better access to information is core to where we are heading. We want to make equal access to educational materials for disabled students a reality! Jim Jim Fruchterman President and CEO Benetech __________ NOD32 2562 (20071001) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. <http://www.eset.com>http://www.eset.com
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