[bookshare-discuss] Re: I am now a volunteer! Now what?
- From: Mike Pietruk <pietruk@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2005 04:40:56 -0500 (EST)
Rose
Welcome aboard!
Cindy, Lisa, and Jana have given you some good pointers for getting
started; and with K1000, you not only have a great OCR scanning package
but also an excellent tool for validating.
Validating is a good place to begin one's volunteer experience with
Bookshare. Currently, there are about 570 books screaming "grab me" on
the step 1 validation page.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned, and I often look at this as much as
the title or author of the book, is who happened to scan it.
After a while, you will get a sense of whose work you are most comfortable
working with; and which ones you rather have someone else grab.
And when I generally work on a validation, if the uploader is known and I
have their email address, I drop them a note letting them know that I've
grabbed their book and then a note again when I've finished with it.
And, if for whatever reason you are uncomfortable with a book after having
grabbed it, you can always go to the Step 2 upload page and release it
back into the validation pool.
I recently discovered a neat little trick insofar as downloading books to
validate. I now save the downloads, which are all .zip files, with the
extension .bks.
With that extension, K1K will immediately open the file when I am in the
open file dialog of the program and I enter its name.
Have fun and you will be a pro at this within a month or two. I've been
validating for only the last 6 months or so, and I cannot tell you how
much I've learned through experience, trial and error, experimentation
plus the invaluable guidance I've gotten from many people on and off the
Volunteer list.
Remember, that at some point, everyone was a firsttime validator or
submitter. And as BookShare is only been around for 3 years or so,
everyone is still relatively new at this and learning all the time.
The more we learn and share together, the better we all become at this;
and the better BookShare becomes as a result.
Other related posts:
