[bksvol-discuss] Re: Jim gets off his duff and speaks
- From: Cindy <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 18:59:26 -0700 (PDT)
Thanks for the explanations, Jim.
I understand how certain things, like the new search
choices, would take a lot of engineering or
programming (are they the same thing?) time and thus
money, but would simply deleting a program or
temporarily stopping it, i.e., the stripper cost? I
can see that creating a program to give readers an
option if they want their books stripped or not could
be costly, but just adding stripping of headers and
leaving page numbers as part of the mandated minimum
work required of validators, in the meantime not using
the stripper, I wouldn't think would cost anything and
would, I should think, solve, at least temporarily,
the problem.
Of course, I may be missing something here.
Cindy
-- Jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Jim Fruchterman of Bookshare.org here. I've been
> reading the discussion
> about the stripper with some interest. There are a
> lot of issues, and
> I'd like to address them in order. First, the
> overview.
>
> Bookshare.org wants to provide quality books that
> address the needs of
> all of our users, at a low cost. We want to get
> more books, highly
> accurate books and better marked up books. And, we
> have to do it on a
> shoestring, as someone pointed out. I spend most of
> my time raising
> money, in large part to plug the deficit that
> Bookshare.org runs. Our
> key priority is to keep the system running and grow
> the number of users,
> so that we can get Bookshare.org to break even.
> After that, as we make
> more money, we plow it back into Bookshare.org for
> more services, more
> books and more engineering improvements.
>
> Right now, we're not flush, but we have enough
> funding to operate and
> for a modest amount of engineering to meet user
> needs and grant
> objectives. We're going to target raising money for
> collection
> development and quality improvements around
> technology. Collection
> development money will fund a replacement for
> Marissa, as well as more
> books. Of course, if we had twice as many
> subscribers, that would do
> wonders funding these things. That's why we hired
> Janice Carter and
> Susie Mackinnon: Janice can run a business better
> than I can, and Susie
> is working hard to bring the education revenue in
> (which is our best bet
> for increased revenue). I think we are in a great
> spot for growth right
> now.
>
> Janice often mentions how amazed she is with how far
> Bookshare.org has
> come on so little funding. I think it's a
> combination of a great
> user/volunteer community with a small but scrappy
> team, together
> dedicated to creating the digital library of the
> future.
>
> So, we want to do more and do better. And,
> constructive criticism is a
> good thing. So, in my next post, let me try to sum
> up what I think the
> page number thing is all about, to inform both our
> engineering and fund
> raising goals.
>
> Jim Fruchterman, Bookshare.org founder
>
>
>
>
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