It took me less than five minutes to click on each main topic of the manual, save the pages to my hard drive as a text file, and send them to my Book Port. Anyone who is computer savvy enough to be a Book Share volunteer surely has the technical know-how to save the manual for future reading if they wish. The staff has stated why they wish to leave the manual on the web for the present. Many software manufacturers follow the same practice with their help files and manuals. I plan to go sit in my comfy recliner, hold a cat on my lap if I can talk her in to it and read the manual on my Book Port. ----- Original Message ----- From: Linda Adams To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 2:27 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Foolproof Method for Manual Download Updates Hi, Evan. That idea may not even work technically, but we have already alienated one person, who said that she wouldn't be reading the manual if she didn't have it on the go, and there may be others like that person. I hope we can come up with something to give people free access to the manual on the go, in their note takers, or whatever, that will satisfy Bookshare's concerns about updates because otherwise, Bookshare, if it does nothing, may alienate several of its volunteers. After all, how can we call ourselves Bookshare if we're not willing to share our main book? Linda Adams ----- Original Message ----- From: Evan Reese To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 12:56 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Foolproof Method for Manual Download Updates Sorry, Linda, but I don't have a good feeling about this idea. Certainly, we want to encourage people to have the latest information, and some problems may arise if they don't get it. But forcing them to download it by not allowing them to volunteer if they don't sounds to me like a really good way of alienating people. Evan ----- Original Message ----- From: Linda Adams To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2007 2:53 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Foolproof Method for Manual Download Updates If Bookshare staff puts a Bookshare manual book in the collection for us to download, a code could be placed in the downloading of that book since Bookshare knows anyway when we download books. This code could be necessary to show up in our account or profile before we would be allowed to submit or validate books. That way, no further volunteering could be done unless the volunteer had downloaded the latest version of the manual. That code could be an automatic password attached to the download of the manual that would be our key to continue volunteering. The system would see that manual download code and permit us to continue volunteering. Linda Adams