[bksvol-discuss] Re: **text Quality**
- From: "Pam Bortz" <pamela@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 15:53:30 -0500
Hi, everyone,
I would leave these as they are, if they are presented in this way in the
print; I know it makes for more confusing reading with speech, but, in my
experience, dialect is not always easy to read anyway.
Pam Bortz
>>> "Louise" <lougou@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 04/29 12:01 PM >>>
speaking of text quality, how do you handle a book in which the word you
appears as a y and an apostrophe, or the word you're appears as y'r or the
word to appears as the letter t and an apostrophe. This may be fine with a
Braille display, but it's very annoying with speech. As an example:
Are y' going t' the store today?
I realize this is a form of dialect and assume it should be left as is, is
this correct? If it was me, I would put the letter a after the y' and the
t', which would make it easier to listen to, but that would change the book,
which I assume is a no-no. Louise
----- Original Message -----
From: <talmage@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 10:02 AM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: **text Quality**
> At 10:49 PM 4/28/2004, you wrote:
>
> > >This without doubt is my biggest issue with bookshare. The "fair
rating."
> > >In my experience, anything marked fair is usually almost unreadable.
>
> I agree with the overall sentiment of what you are saying, but there are
> always exceptions to any rule.
> Some books are still rated fair as a result of the bug that existed in the
> Bookshare rating system a while back;
> Some books are rated fair because of numerous foreign language words, and
a
> poor job by the person who edited the submission in not catching this and
> boosting the rating;
> Some are rated fair because the headers and footers didn't scan well and
> weren't stripped out, but the text may deserve a good rating;
> Some books may have instances of hand written letters inserted which may
> not seriously impact the overall readability of the book;
> Some books may be accurate reflections of the written text, but by todays
> standards of spelling and grammar may get a fair rating;
> and, some books may be so old and rare that you can't find them elsewhere,
> but you can only get a fair rating out of them.
>
> Perhaps Bookshare should also have a poor rating for the really bad scans,
> but where the books may still have some redeeming qualities.
>
> > >To the people who say, "having the book is better then no book at all,"
I
> > >say, you are outright wrong!!"
> >
> >I have to say, that 1 word "wrong", was probably the only reason I
decided
> >to respond to this message.
> As the saying goes, "different strokes for different folks." I may like
> single malt scotch, while you may not, but this doesn't make you
> wrong. It's called a different opinion.
> While I may not read books with a fair rating often, there have been
> occasions where I have because they may have been the only copy I could
> find available.
> Personally, I hate braille, and wouldn't even consider reading anything
> longer than a label in that form; likewise, I no longer listen to tape
> books as I can kill a cassette player probably quicker then anyone you
have
> ever met.
> It also used to drive me crazy trying to coax a tape along that wasn't
> cooperating, or getting to tape 4, of a 6 tape set only to find it was
useless.
>
> Ultimately, I would like to see Bookshare start a program aimed at
> improving the quality of the collection. Maybe have a separate download
> section for the volunteers where the books rated fair could be rescanned
to
> improve the quality.
>
> In closing, I have to add, that after using a KRM model 400 for years,
even
> some of the books rated fair on Bookshare are an improvement.
>
> Dave
>
>
>
>
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