[bksvol-discuss] Re: synopses, quality, etc.

From: "Nehemiah R. Hall" <trekman13@xxxxxxxx>
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 12:17:37 -0500
May I ask, can we copy synopsies from the library of congress? I didn't
think they were copyrighted as such.
Nehemiah
"Back in the sixties he was part of the free speech movement at Berkeley.
I think he did a little too much LDS." Captain James Kirk, Star Trek IV.
The Voyage Home
Email: trekman13@xxxxxxxx or trekman13@xxxxxxxxx
MSN: strongeagle2197@xxxxxxxxxxx
aim screen name: NehemiahRepublic


On Thu, 29 Apr 2004 09:43:07 -0500 Guido Corona <guidoc@xxxxxxxxxx>
writes:

Thank you so much Jesse. 

On the subject of my draconian proposal to reject postings based on the
artistry of synopsis,  that was a complete straw-man,  which I sometimes
call an 'intellectual irritant'.  I was fully expecting the idea to be
vehemently rejected by volunteers and staff alike, 
after some furious discussion on the subject.  I am happy to say I did
succeed beyond belief! 

About quoting Amazon:  agreed,  we should not quote Amazon in synopsis, 
but we can look at Amazon book summaries and extremely-loosely paraphrase
them,  or draw inspiration from them,  without making the attribution
obvious, or even guessable. 

A mechanism for volunteers to go and fix book records after books have
been published, to update summaries,  correct authors, titles, ISBN and
the like will be extremely welcome. 

In the meantime,  I invite volunteers who would like some help with the
creation of synopsis to post their requests to the list,  with a
subjectline somewhat like: 

Synopsis help wanted:  Satura by Aloysius WQ. Schmaltzenstein Gavronsky 

Some of the most tediously verbose volunteers like myself may often be
delighted to assist. 

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





"Jesse Fahnestock" <Jesse.F@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 
Sent by: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
04/29/2004 09:06 AM Please respond to
bksvol-discuss

To<bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
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Subject[bksvol-discuss] synopses, quality, etc.







Hey all -- sorry I've been offline for some lively conversation! I'll try
to weigh in where necessary. As always, please feel free to email me
offline about any of these issues.

1. Synopses: Just to be clear, while I understand the desire for
synopses, books missing one or both forms of synopsis should not be
rejected on that basis, by volunteer or administrator. I have no problem
with the urging and cajoling of our fellow volunteers to include them,
but making them mandatory would simply be prohibitive and discouraging
for some of our submitters, especially those who submit in bulk. 

2. The synopsis bug: There are a few cases where the synopsis being
entered will not stick: namely, books that have previously been submitted
and approved, whether or not they have since been withdrawn. In those
cases the original synopses will stick. Validators are able to change the
synopses on brand new submissions, however, so please don't be
discouraged! The vast majority of your synopses are sticking. We're
working on fixing it for books that have already existed on
Bookshare.org, but it's been a tricky one.

3. Synopses from other sources: please do not copy synopses from
Amazon.com or any other source, unless it is the same copy found on the
book jacket. That is copyrighted material, and while it is "quotable" in
a news context (like Alison's newsletter) it should not be used as the
synopsis in our collection.

4. Site improvements: the categories issue is a long-standing one, and
one we've spent a lot of time trying to plan for. While we do acknowledge
the need for better category management, making changes would require a
large amount of database work (not to mention likely manual
recategorization), and, if it were not a completely robust solution,
might need to be done over and over again. The full-scale answer is to
change our metadata source entirely to something like what the library of
congress uses. This change is probably a ways out still, but given our
limited resources, it probably makes more sense to make that change once
rather than try to take half-steps.

The notification for users of rejection reasons is on the way, I'm told.
Look for it in a rejection notice coming to you soon! (grin)

The short synopsis field is a textarea field, and that does not accept
the maxlength attribute. As Sara (I think) noted, fixing the length would
require javascript, which is problematic for many users. I will float the
idea for a single synopsis -- keep in mind that this will be displayed on
the search results page, however, so it would still need to be pretty
limited. You couldn't have a 100-word synopsis there.

5. Regarding text quality: I love the fact that this group has high
standards -- I'm consistently amazed at the effort being put into the
scans of others by our volunteers. But I'd encourage us to try to avoid
accusatory messages when it comes to text quality. There are many
mitigating factors, some of which have already been pointed out here, and
we would be wrong to discourage anyone from submitting the books they
want to share. So let's focus on ensuring the readability and legibility
of what has been submitted, and of course encouraging our fellow scanners
with tips and techniques as many of us already do.


________________________

Jesse Fahnestock
Collection Development Coordinator, Bookshare.org
www.bookshare.org

A Project of The Benetech Initiative - Technology Serving Humanity
480 S. California Ave., Suite 201
Palo Alto, CA 94306-1609  USA
(650)475-5440 x133
(650) 475-1066 FAX
jesse@xxxxxxxxxxxx
www.benetech.org
[bksvol-discuss] Re: synopses, quality, etc.

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