Nan, What an excellent explanation and request for help. Would you be willing to let others on the list circulate it among their friends? ----- Original Message ----- From: Nan Hawthorne To: Bksvol-Discuss Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 2:06 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] FW: [scheherazade] From Nan: Is reading important to you? I just sent this to all my friends and family. I hope it works and Bookshare gets more validators. Nan -----Original Message----- Dear friends and family, If you know me, you know books and reading are important to me and share the feeling. I have started volunteering for a group called Bookshare.org whose mission is to turn print books into text using scanners and text conversion software. They do this for people who are blind or otherwise cannot read print. This is, in many ways, a better solution than tape recording books. Why? Because text format books can be read no matter what medium a print impaired person uses: screen magnification on a computer, a talking computer, printing in large print, even a refreshable Braille display. Plus being a simple download for anyone who is eligible for these materials, the access is immediate.. no waiting on an interminable waiting list for a book to be mailed to you by the library for the blind. What Bookshare needs now more than anything are volunteers who can read through books that have already been scanned to make sure the result is faithful to the original. You won't need to buy anything or pay anything. You just download the book, read it, then send it back with whatever corrections were needed. You get to read all the books you want and do a good thing at the same time. It's a relatively young organization.. maybe ten years at most. And they are into collection development. They do have a lot of books already scanned and just waiting to be checked, or "validated", before they can be released for use. One thing I most value about these text format books is that they can be searched. I do a lot of reading about Anglo Saxon England, and not everything in an audio book is relevant to my research. But I can't sxearch an audio book. So I have to read from cover to cover. I know you consider reading one of the most important things in your life. If you volunteer for Bookshare as a validate, which is what this task is called, you will get to read as you make it possible for others who want to but can't. If you are sighted they will ask you to write a short essay. They do this becuase in order to be able to use the copyrighted material, they must restrict use to those who need it. They need to make sure a sighted volunteer really wants to help and not just get free books. I hope you will take a look at www.bookshare.org and decide to volunteer, just as I did. I wrote this entire message at my own initiative because reading and volunteering are, as you well know, terribly important to me. Your friend, Nan Hawthorne __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Files | Photos | Links | Database | Polls | Members | Calendar Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity a.. 1New Members Visit Your Group SPONSORED LINKS a.. Creative writing b.. Creative writing course c.. Creative writing class d.. Writing book e.. Creative writing program Yahoo! TV Want the scoop? Check out today's news and gossip. Need traffic? Drive customers With search ads on Yahoo! HDTV Support on Yahoo! Groups Help with Samsung HDTVs and devices . __,_._,___ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.12.1/963 - Release Date: 8/20/2007 5:44 PM