Monica, I absolutely agree with you.When someone holds a book in their hands and looks at a page, the person can say "Oh yes that page is blank." But in a electronic format, there is no page to reference with the blankness, so even if the page number is not stripped, the person reading does not know if there was a picture, a chart, a blank page. Writing [blank page] gives the reader the information that someone with the hard copy in hand would ascertain for themselves.
Also, if the page number is stripped a reader does not know for sure (as you said) whether or not something is missing.
Also, I really encourage submitters to scan all pages, blank or not and not to leave out numbered pages that are blank. If numbers are missing in the numeric sequence of pages, Carrie cannot tell if pages are in fact missing.
Cat Lover Lori----- Original Message ----- From: "Monica Willyard" <rhyami@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2008 2:05 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Don't worry! and 2 questions
Hi, Evan, Paula, and Lissi. I make a note that the page is blank for two reasons. First, I number that page so the Bookshare stripper won't ignore the page, messing up the page numbering as a result. When the current Bookshare stripper sees a page with nothing on it, it skips that page. If all the tool sees on that page is a number, it may or may not detect it as a page. The tool looks for text on the blank page, so I tell it that the page is blank. So the stripper sees the page and keeps the page numbering intact. I'm especially likely to make time to do this if I'm working on a book that students might use. My second reason for noting that a page is blank is more subjective. I try to let the reader know if a page contains a photograph, drawing, or chart, even if I can't describe them. I want the reader to know when a page is blank due to having no content rather than being blank because I had to delete garbled junk that's actually a picture of something. Again, I'm more likely to do this in a textbook or a book comminly read by students. It's my way of trying to give the student as much feedback about the print book as possible, given that I can't see to describe things. It used to bug me when I had books from RFB, and the book would skip from page 120 to 122 with no explanation. I'd ask myself questions like, "What happened to page 121? Did they forget to read it? Was it a picture? Did I just miss something important?" I'd have to find a sighted student and ask them about it. I'm trying to prevent Bookshare readers from having to do that when I can. -- Monica Willyard Visit my blog at http://www.scannersguild.com To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxput the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
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