I wanted to follow up on Richard's email, which I appreciate as I hope it
gives
folks some ideas of some of the options for working with Bookshare.org as an
institution. I understand, however, that some of the specifics in the email
might
be a little confusing, and it was my intention only to spread the general
message
that Bookshare.org is a more flexible option than people realize. In terms
of
specific implementations, I would certainly encourage anyone who is
interested
to contact me directly ([log in to unmask]) to discuss putting something in
place
that works for your school.

There are a couple of factual matters that I should clear up, however, in
addition to what Peter posted:

Bookshare.org is more than just aware of the DAISY standard: we are an
active member of the consortium, and all Bookshare.org books are available
in the NISO/DAISY 3.0 format. Indeed the law requires us to make our books
available in specialized formats such as DAISY and digital braille, and our
copyrighted materials are not available for download in plain text. The
DAISY
files available from Bookshare.org at the moment do not make full use of
the DAISY DTD structure (it's very difficult to accurately tag things like
chapters
and headings in scanned books, but it's something we're working on), but
they
do provide some essential structure and navigation capability (by page and
paragraph,
bookmarking).

I think the confusion here comes from the fact that our DAISY books are
text-only
DAISY, a legitimate "flavor" of the DAISY standard supported by NISO/DAISY
3.0. Many
people still think of DAISY as DAISY 2.0, which only supported marked-up
audio
files. The 3.0 standard can support either XML-based structured text or
audio or,
ideally, both. Indeed it can support many more things, including video and
layered
graphics and anything that can be referenced by the format's SMIL file. At
the moment
we provide text-only DAISY 3.0 because it makes more sense for internet
distribution
and because we feel that access to the text of the book is a valuable
resource. (The
text can be listened to using text to speech, of course). Likewise RFB&D
provide
audio-only DAISY 3.0 at the moment, because that makes best use of their
high-quality audio book production facilities and human narrators. The fact
that both types of DAISY book can be obtained, albeit from different
sources,
is a very positive thing! Someday full-text, full-audio DAISY books will be
widely
available, something we very much look forward to.

(Finally, one minor thing...I'm actually not a Ms., I'm a Mr., but Jesse
will do just fine. Just wanted everyone to know so they don't get shocked by

my voice if they decide to give me a call!)

Thanks for taking the time to read, and thanks to Richard and Peter for
their posts.

________________________

Jesse Fahnestock
Product Manager, 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
[log in to unmask]
www.benetech.org



-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Jones [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2003 9:21 AM
To: EASI (E-mail)
Cc: [log in to unmask]; Maureen Theobald; AZPac
Subject: FW: Bookshare.org e-text structure


I have been communicating with Bookshare.org on how an educational
institution uses their service.  I received the following reply.  Ms.
Fahnestock does answer many issues and questions about Bookshare.org. Her
answers are good news for postsecondary institutions, because, in many ways,
Bookshare.org is very competitive with RFB&D.   On other issues, such as an
institutional discount for student memberships, Bookshare.org mentions
negotiating for a better price and does not provide a table of discounts. So
in some ways we  are left without a clear idea of their price structure.
In defense of the organization, they are new and in an expanding market.
However, it will be worth your effort to contact them and see if they have
the books you need and what it will cost for you to use them.
I will tell those of you who are interested in structured documents, A.K.A.
"DAISY," that Bookshare.org is certainly aware of DAISY and is very
interested, but they only provide "txt" documents at this time. If you are
moving to or require structured documents, there is software that will take
a text file, mark it up, automatically, with DAISY and convert it into a
computer generated audio file.  DBB - The Danish National Library for the
Blind, STD and STEB generators, http://www.dbb.dk/Software/ (moderately
expensive, but slick.)
Limitation: There is always a limitation.  Unless graphical and symbolic
information in the textbook is properly described in the txt file, that
graphical information will be lost in the conversion using this software.



www.bookshare.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Jesse Fahnestock [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2003 7:16 PM
To: 'Richard Jones'; Jesse Fahnestock
Subject: RE: Bookshare.org e-text structure


Richard:
I'm afraid there's some misinformation out there about how institutional
involvement with Bookshare.org works. I would be much obliged if you could
help spread the correct impression!
First, there is no cost to set up an organizational account with
Bookshare.org, which allows the institution to add and remove students as
they come and go, to accrue credits for book submissions that can be applied

to membership costs, and to receive a single bill. There was a charge at one

point, but it has long since been discontinued!
Second, we do provide flexible pricing for schools with many students to
sign up. While a school with just a handful of students needing access may
need to pay each student's membership fees, a school with a large number of
subscribing students will be eligible for some reduction in fees, which is
handled on a case-by-case basis. We have also established partnerships with
some schools that institutionalize both the book sharing process and the
reduced subscriber rate; these again are handled on a case-by-case basis,
but might make sense for a school that does a lot of scanning and has a lot
of students needing access!
Third, while every student does indeed need to sign Bookshare.org's member
agreement and provide proof of disability, subscriptions for students can be

added and removed as needed. For example, if you have 20 students who need
access to materials, each semester, but they will be a different 20 each
semester, you wouldn't have to purchase 60 subscriptions for the year. A
deal could be worked out whereby ASU had a fixed number of subscriptions and

could change the students associated with those subscriptions, as long as
the number paid for was not exceeded and as long as every student signed the

member agreement and provided proof of disability. Again, we would work with

a model like this on a case-by-case basis.
So I hope you can see that access to Bookshare.org is neither as inflexible
nor as expensive as you may have heard. It's that general message, rather
than the potentially confusing details I listed above, that I hope you'll
spread amongst your colleagues around the country. I would be happy to speak

to any of them about a system that could work for their students. While we
seek to be a self-sustaining service, we are a non-profit whose primary goal

is to make as many materials available to as many disabled students as
possible, and to give those students the flexibility with those materials
they need, while living up to our obligations under the Chafee amendment. We

believe we can do that in ways that will work for schools and their students

-- please let me know if we can do it for ASU!
jesse.
________________________
Jesse Fahnestock
Product Manager, 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
[log in to unmask]
www.benetech.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Jones [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 7:26 AM
To: 'Jesse Fahnestock'
Subject: RE: Bookshare.org e-text structure


Thank you for the reply.  I have shared your email with individuals at other

universities.  I found, in addition to your information, that you do not
have a institutional membership like RFB&D and that we must pay to become a
member of your organization and then the university must pay for each
student who uses the files to become a member. (Since the files are a
disability accommodation, the university pays.) This payment schedule
quickly becomes very expensive.  Have you considered establishing an
institutional membership?
-----Original Message-----
From: Jesse Fahnestock [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 9:35 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Bookshare.org e-text structure


Richard:
Apologies for the delayed response to your question. Alison Lingane, to whom

you initially wrote, has recently begun maternity leave, and I'm just
beginning to catch up with all of her emails as I fill in for her!
In terms of your question, Bookshare.org does deliver all of its books in
the NISO/DAISY 3.0 format. Currently our DAISY books are only marked up at
the page and paragraph level; because they begin as scanned books, we've
faced some challenges automatically identifying chapters, headings, etc. We
plan to do some engineering work to address this over the course of this
year.
Just so you know, all of Bookshare.org's books are also available in grade 2

digital braille as well. Public domain books are also availabe in html and
text.
I should also clarify that this DAISY markup is done automatically, by a
server-side process. We don't require that submissions come with any
particular markup. If a person or organization wants to share a scanned
book, they can submit it in virtually any format. We're already working with

centers such as yours at several universities; some submit their books as
DOCs, others as KES files, etc. That's fine -- we do the processing on our
side.
Are you interested in contributing books scanned by the DRS at ASU? If you
are, I'd be happy to help make that process as easy as possible for you. By
submitting any books you've scanned you'd not only be helping other students

around the country (who wouldn't have to scan them), you'd be earning
credits towards future subscriptions to Bookshare.org for ASU students.
Please let me know if you're interested in that.
Additionally, if you're interested in getting access to the Bookshare.org
collection for your students, I'd be happy to help yu get started there,
too. Let me know.
Thanks for your interest in Bookshare.org, I hope to hear from you soon.
________________________
Jesse Fahnestock
Product Manager, 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
[log in to unmask]
www.benetech.org