Sarah, Your post did a much better job of what I was trying to say with my original post on this subject. There are definitely times when no book is better than poor quality, because the existence of a book at all might let somebody off the hook of providing a really usable one. And as you say, text books are instances where this is all too likely to happen, both with regard to the quality issues they pose for ocr, especially if you can't see the original to try to make corrections, and with regard to the liklihood of some institution trying to get out of providing a better copy, Its a real shame that we don't have a uniformly enforced strict law that text book publishers would be required to make alternative format copies of all their books available to students. Mary