|
 BookShare.org:
Membership Driven Site That Offers Electronic Books
For more articles like this
visit
https://www.bridges4kids.org.
Bookshare.org
dramatically increases access to books for the community of
visually impaired and otherwise print disabled individuals. This
online community enables book scans to be shared, thereby
leveraging the collections of thousands of individuals who
regularly scan books, eliminating significant duplication of
effort.
To visit, go to
www.bookshare.org.
Bookshare.org
takes advantage of a special exemption in the U.S. copyright law
that permits the reproduction of publications into specialized
formats for the disabled.
-
Who can
benefit from Bookshare.org?
-
How does it
work?
-
What does it
cost?
-
Where do the
books come from?
-
How is
Bookshare.org different than NLS or RFB&D?
-
Who is behind
Bookshare.org?
Who can
benefit from Bookshare.org?
People who are blind or have severe visual impairments that
prevent them from reading ordinary newspaper print, even when
wearing glasses or contact lenses.
People with learning disabilities such as dyslexia which
interfere with the ability to read print material.
People with mobility limitations that interfere with holding or
turning the pages of a book.
Bookshare.org will also serve organizations such as the state,
local and federal educational system, the rehabilitation system,
specialized nonprofit agencies and various governmental units
that provide accessible materials to people with disabilities.
Copyrighted digital books are available for download to U.S.
residents who submit proof of a disability that affects reading.
Find out more about individual memberships or organizational
accounts.
Excellent or Good quality books from the Bookshare.org
collection can be ordered in embossed Braille, to be mailed to
anyone in the United States, without requiring membership. Find
out more about ordering embossed Braille books.
How does it
work?
Log onto
www.bookshare.org and register. Separately provide us with a
written proof of a print disability. After paying a modest
annual subscription fee, access the entire Bookshare.org
collection. Select books to download in a format to use with
common Braille or synthetic voice reading devices. Read to your
heart's content!
Bookshare.org is a web-based system supplying accessible books
in digital formats designed for people with disabilities. These
digital formats are the NISO/DAISY XML-based format for the next
generation of talking books, and the BRF format for Braille
devices and printers. Access to copyrighted books from
Bookshare.org is limited to people in the United States with
bona fide print disabilities and the non profit organizations
serving them. An array of security protections and Digital
Rights Management solutions ensure that these books are
available only to authorized users. Read more about legal
information.
What does it
cost?
Individual subscriptions cost $25 to sign up, $50 for the
annual subscription. Bookshare.org's goal is to break even
financially with modest membership fees and extensive volunteer
support from its community of members and supporters. Find out
more about subscriptions.
Where do the
books come from?
The Bookshare.org collection is built and shaped largely by
its community of members and supporters. By scanning a book to
submit to the collection, a Bookshare.org volunteer or member
can provide access to that book to other members. If you have
digital copies of books that you have scanned in for your own
use, you can submit them and enable others to benefit from your
scanning effort. Find out how to Submit a Book.
We also accept original digital copies supplied directly from
the copyright holder. For more information, visit our
information page for authors and publishers.
Finally, to help increase the awareness of other accessible
books that do not originate from Bookshare.org, we list
accessible books from other providers. These are called "Remote
Books" and are indicated as such when the collection is
searched. We refer you to the book provider’s web site to find
out detail about ordering the book. These providers may have
different requirements and fees that are outlined on their web
sites.
How is
Bookshare.org different than NLS or RFB&D?
Bookshare.org will provide a vast library of low cost
scanned books instead of a small library of high quality digital
books.
Both the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically
Handicapped of the Library of Congress (NLS) and Recording for
the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D) offer high quality digital book
services. Contract narrators at NLS and volunteers at RFB&D
record the audio books. The cost per book is quite high because
of quality control requirements, and this limits production. NLS
has a server providing roughly 4700 books in the Braille BRF
format available on the Internet. RFB&D launched their digital
program by making 6000 DAISY formatted audio books available on
CR-ROMS in September 2002.
Bookshare.org cannot guarantee the quality of the books it
provides because it is relying on its community of members and
supporters to produce books by scanning. This method should
produce a library of tens of thousands of books shortly after
Bookshare.org is launched. Bookshare.org is fully legal under
U.S. copyright law. Read more about legal information.
Many of these publications will be carefully proofread,
providing high quality full text, with structure and audio. The
great majority, however, will simply be scanned books,
redistributed in a digital format. Compared to investing three
hours to scan a book, as each of thousands of disabled people do
daily, the opportunity to instantly get a book equal in quality
to a personal OCR scan will lower a major barrier to access.
Who is behind
Bookshare.org?
Benetech, a new kind of nonprofit enterprise, is sponsoring
the Bookshare.org initiative. Benetech melds the mission and
heart of social activism with the powerful methods and tools of
the technology community. Benetech doesn't give technology away,
but instead develops socially beneficial and affordable products
and services that are not financially attractive to for-profit
companies. For more information, visit
www.benetech.org.
Benetech's origins start with its Arkenstone project. In 1989, a
group of visionary Silicon Valley engineers and executives asked
themselves a profound question: "Why couldn't the far-reaching
power of the PC with voice synthesis be combined with scanning
technology to create a usable, affordable reading machine for
the blind?" The market was small and for-profit companies were
not interested. Benetech was formed as a nonprofit enterprise to
bridge the gap between "the possible and profitable."
During the past 11 years, Benetech sold literacy products under
the Arkenstone brand in more than a dozen languages to over
35,000 individuals in 60 countries. The goal from the beginning
was to empower people with vision and learning disabilities to
use state of the art technology to achieve independence and high
performance in the workplace. During this time, 99 percent of
the nonprofit's budget came from product sales.
Today, Benetech has become one of the nation's most successful
examples of high technology social enterprise, using an
innovative business model to achieve major social objectives in
education, employment and independence. The Arkenstone product
line was so successful that it was purchased by a for-profit
company and was thereby assured expansion capital and
sustainability. The income received from the sale of Arkenstone
provided the core capital for Benetech and seed investment for
Bookshare.org.
back to the top ~
back to Breaking News
~ back to
What's New
| 