Category: book Nook
I'm just curious as to how many bookshare.org subscribers there are on the zone...? I am starting the sign up process. I chose the proof of a disability where they contact NLS, because I am a member of them too. Hopefully, I'll be on it soon. I do have some questions though: how is the book quality? don't people get disgusted with poorly scanned books? I think this is all for now...lol. K
Hey
I've been a subscriber for about a year. Book quality on the programming books (they state quality is "good") is almost perfect (those are all textor html files though, haven't tried Daisy stuff yet).
The quality of the book is usually indicated, I've heard "fair" quality books are not that great, you can aso actually sign up to proof read a book and submit the fixes back to them. If you want to contribute this is often a great idea and very helpful to other subscribers in the future.
cheers
-B
Not only that, but if the improvements you make are substantial, they will give you money for your time towards the next time you have to pay. Some of the good, some errors books aren't the greatest either, but most of them now are ranked as exelent, almost no errors. All and all, its been both a huge time and money saver for me. Paying $50 a year for access to 20600 books is a hell of a deal if u ask me.
I've been a bookshare member for about a year, too. I like it a lot. I've scanned a few books and sumbitted them to ear credits. Sometimes scanning errors are a little annoying, but for the most part, they don't really bother me.
Hey Katie, I'm also a bookshare member, and I love it! The quality isn't too bad most of the time, but I've seen some bad ones. I think you'll like it.
Could anyone on here compare bookshare to NLS's WebBraille program? Do you see it as being advantageous to being a member of both? Thanks!
Definatly. I mean, the crappy thing about nls's web braille is that u can't download bigger books in one volume. I guess this good for some, since if they are loading the books in to a notetaker with not much memory, this could come in handy, but not for most people I don't think. But NLS prides itself on perfect quality stuff, so if I was going to download a brf book from either bookshare or web braille, I'd have to choose web braille for sure. But yeah, the more resources u have, the better u r off.
I'm in the process of joining Bookshare also. I just need to hear back from the people that they accepted my Proof of Disability thing, then pay the fee and stuff. That's good that volunteers are able to edit the books as I was wondering about that. I don't think I'd pay to get the book in Braille, but if I did have to, I don't think I could stand there being unnecessary mistakes. I'm too much of a perfectionist a lot of the time and would probably end up remembering it, especially if I had to pay for it. *smiles* But yeah, I think i'd just read the books from my computer, and I might help out with some of the proofreading. I love the fact that it has many books that are hard or almost impossible to find anywhere else and that they would be practically free to read! *smiles* Also, I'll definitely be adding more scanned books sometime.
Leilani
I'm still seriously considering joining bookshare. I think I will at some point, as I am a voracious reader and can never read enoug hbooks hehehe!
Caitlin
muchly disgruntaled that you have to be in the US to use bookshare.org *pouts*
Yeah, it is kind of crappy that other countries can't just combine forces. We would have lots more material that way, and it would save lots of people lots ofwork. I mean, if a book is scanned for people in the UK, for example, that book can not by accessed by someone in Australia or the US. Someone from each of those countries has to do the work to make the books accessible. Copyright laws are the lose.
Hey I've been on Bookshare almost 2 years now. The quality is usually pretty good, except in some cases where the pages have been switched around or something. Obviously WebBraille has much better quality and is formatted uniformly, but I'm not a huge freak about formatting or anything, I just want reading material!! And Bookshare gives me reading new books much faster than WebBraille. Also, now I think they're adding newspapers and things to Bookshare which is awesome if they continue it! So yeah, I definitely think it's worth it.
Ya I don't care about format as long as teh thing's legible heheh. And why is it that only the US uses bookshare? That's stupid.
Because of international copyright laws. Each country has a different set of them, and it would be impossible to screen for something like that. I think there should be some sort of uniform law about those with reading disabilities accessing material, but again, each country has it's own sets of laws about what constitutes having a reading disability, so I'm afraid there might not ever be away a legal way to give everyone access to bookshare.
That so sucks!
Stupid laws! i think we should get them abolished somehow hehehe.
I'm a member of bookshare and i looove it! I got all the books I'm reading at the moment from it; tom sawyer, (guess why? heehee) and I'm going to try and get hold of huckleberry finn. and all the other books i read, so i can carry them around! he alison