[bksvol-discuss] Re: My nickel's worth--quality control

  • From: "Sarah Van Oosterwijck" <curiousentity@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 11:14:46 -0500

Says the person who spell checks instead of reading. <g>  Yes, I do know you
think of quality, but not in the same way as some of us, who obsessively
read and check everything. :-)  Actually I'd like to validate something
you've submitted to see how well the method works.

Liz, you make me feel guilty for not validating more.  I have to admit to
liking to scan and edit my own stuff more than the unknown of other peoples
work.  If excellent quality always was reported accurately I wouldn't be as
hesitant, though.  It helps when the submitter advertises their submission
on this list, and describes what kind of work has already been done on the
book.

Sarah Van Oosterwijck
curious entity at earthlink dot net


----- Original Message -----
From: "Guido Corona" <guidoc@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 4:53 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: My nickel's worth--quality control


> Liz,  you are a breath of fresh air!
>
> Guido
>
>
> Guido D. Corona
> IBM Accessibility Center,  Austin Tx.
> IBM Research,
> Phone:  (512) 838-9735
> Email: guidoc@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Visit my weekly Accessibility WebLog at:
> http://www-3.ibm.com/able/weblog/corona_weblog.html
>
>
>
>
>
> "Liz Halperin" <lizzers@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent by: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 06/17/2004 04:04 PM
> Please respond to
> bksvol-discuss
>
>
> To
> <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> cc
>
> Subject
> [bksvol-discuss] My nickel's worth--quality control
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Ok, I suspect I may get bashed, but here goes anyway:
>
> I wish everyone would just SLOW DOWN. There seems to be this frenzy to
> get books into the collection, and less care on their quality. As a
> braille reader, I know I am in the minority, but my patience for sloppy
> books is low.
>
> When I scan a book I am very careful to send a clean copy up. I don't
> expect the validator to have to do much of anything except make sure no
> corruption of the file has occurred. I am proud of quality over
> quantity.
>
> I have been doing some validating and there have been a few books
> equally clean as those I submit. They are a joy to validate. Most have
> problems. I fix what I can. Books are submitted without the ISBN listed
> (even though it's right there), sections missing, whole messed up pages.
> When I am faced with many blank pages and then text pages run together
> and too many spelling errors and character errors, I feel no guilt to
> reject the book. It's not worth spending so many hours on. Better to get
> it rescanned in a better version. When I finally validate something,
> it's clean and ready to go. Any problems after that are from the
> Bookshare conversion processes.
>
> With over 500 books waiting for validation, I wish there would be a
> moratorium on scanning submissions. When there was too much backlog at
> the Bookshare end, they made a concerted effort to get caught up. It's
> now OUR end that needs the effort, the volunteers.
>
> The two lists, books-volunteer-discuss and books-discuss, are very very
> busy. What if all the time spent reading and writing on the lists was
> spent on validating, for awhile, at least?
>
> What if scanners made an effort to send up better quality? What if
> validators had better quality to start with and so could approve  faster
> and cleaner? What if we humans went beyond spellcheck and made sure that
> other errors were caught? Errors such as "form" for "from" and "end" for
> "and" and stuff like that?  What if we went for quality over quantity
> for awhile?
>
> Liz in Seattle
>
> Liz Halperin
> Seattle, WA
> lizzers@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
>
>


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