Rose, try books submitted by Shellly or Jake or others who post here because
they are very careful about editing their scans prior to submission. I just
validated Shelly's "journey of a turtle" and it took less than 15 minutes to
spellcheck and upload. The automatic tool tried to rate it as adult content
though because of the scientific explanation of reproduction. Just goes to
show that humans are still more nuanced than machines will ever be *smile*.
Cheryl Fogle MA Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology, University of New Mexico
Rose
Choose a book that likely won't require much on your end for starters. This is the way to become comfortable with the process. You can find such books by examining comments the submitters may include with their submissions or sticking with submitters that generally do extensive clean-up and prevalidating prior to submitting. Kid books may also prove good starter books as they tend to be shorter.
Personally, I use K1000 for my validating work as it has all of the needed tools including rank spelling which can give you a good sense of the quality of the submission. Remember, the validation guidelines are rather basic despite what some of us may choose to do on our own. These include making certain that the book isn't already on BookShare, that it is a scanned book and not an etext taken from another source, that title, author and copyright info is supplied, and that the book is complete in its text. Also it must have page breaks. It must also be readable enough fitting at least the fair category. If it makes that grade, what you choose to do in addition is up to you. You, however, can accept the book without further editing on your part; and editing of a book isn't a validation requirement.