By the way, Jesse is a man.

Dave

At 10:21 AM 3/25/2003 -0700, you wrote:

>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/>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]>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]>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]>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