Well I'm glad you got that off your chest Paul, sorry I haven't had time
to read it all but the bits that were of interest to me were really
useful, thanks. I use disforum as a 'virtual staff room' which was its
creators intention I believe. I use to it alert colleagues to issues if
I feel they might benefit and I use it to support or comment on others
in the interest of 'working together'. I have gained much support from
this forum and I hope this spirit will continue.
It was me who started the thread and all I was trying to ascertain was
'is my experience unusual?' I have been trying to locate modern texts
for students studying computing science and business studies, books
which are 'hot sellers' for these courses now, so the archived books are
really of no use in this context. I'm sorry if any comments like 'as a
sighted person I can purchase a book in my required format from anywhere
and have instant access to it, how are publisher's able to get away with
not providing their goods in accessible format ?' made you feel that I
was just here publisher bashing, at the time it felt like there was a
huge inequality, no, sorry, it stills feels that way!
Just to reassure you Paul that I am not dealing in electronic copies of
books from a virtual car boot sale - 'spraying them everywhere{sic}'
Pearsons and others have web based enquiry forms for exactly these
requests (and I have spoken to them on the phone also) they have
confirmation documents that they require signed by the student and the
University that say the electronic copy will stay with the individual it
was purchased for.
Chris Baxter
Disability Service Co-ordinator
The Nottingham Trent University
Burton Street
Nottingham
NG1 4BU
0115 8486163 voice and minicom
[log in to unmask]
www.ntu.ac.uk/sss/disability/index.html
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Jarman
Sent: 02 November 2005 19:34
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Update on electronic copies
At last, something to appease my wrath! I was determined to write last
week and ask why Disforum was turning into a "let's bash the publisher"
website, but I had more jobs on than David Blunkett, so didn't get
around to it. Coincidentally, just when the discussion was raging at
its height, I suddenly discovered that one of my visually-impaired
students needed a massive book on the First World War in just one week's
time for a post-graduate seminar. I contacted the publishers, Cassell
(a fairly small London firm) last Monday afternoon at about 3 to explain
what I needed and why. Like most publishers one contacts, they had
never come across the situation before, but what was the result of my
call? The entire book was with me by e-mail by 10 A.M. on Tuesday
morning--not even 24 hours. Back in the summer I wanted a book from
Alan Sutton Publishers in Stroud, again, a fairly small outfit, but
publisher of some magnificent titles. This one was for my own research
(totally blind myself, by the way). I think it took the woman at Sutton
about 48 hours to get this one to me electronically. And this, in my
experience, is the norm.
So what am I doing right? Is it that I'm just particularly charming or
extremely good at my job? Well, I'd like to think both, but I think
that there are three key issues here. Firstly, I'm not absolutely
obsessed with disability legislation, and consequently don't go in with
all guns a-blazing. Nothing is more calculated to alienate and achieve
completely the opposite effect than to start a dialogue with a publisher
from the perspective of: "do you know that under the god-knows-what act
of god-knows-when you are obliged ..." That would certainly be enough
to make me think that I might suddenly have accidentally lost the
relevant electronic files, wouldn't it you? Legislation is a fantastic
weapon against absolute intransigence, and I've wielded it myself only a
couple of years ago to obtain considerable compensation from an Indian
restaurant owner who refused entry for my guide dog into his
establishment. In my experience however, publishers are anything but
intransigent. This was shown, I think, by the number of big names who
sent reps to the conference to discuss the obtaining of e-books for the
blind at the British Library earlier this year. According to my
records, I've approached 7 publishers for e-versions of their books
since September of last year, and 6 of them have come up with the goods
in fairly quick time. In addition to the two small ones mentioned
above, I've had great relations with bigger names like OUP and
Cavendish. By all means let's strive for some better legislation to
back up our case with those publishers who are quite determined never to
play ball, but, as with so many issues now it seems, can we stop making
the DDA stand for "dismissing dialogue absolutely".
Secondly, perhaps it's because I'm also a part-time academic as well as
working in the field of disability that I am sympathetic to the
publishers' concerns, and do everything in my power to ease those
concerns. I'm hopefully about to strike a contract for my own book, and
I can tell you now that if I thought that the publisher would one day be
spraying it around electronically in the public domain, I would be
absolutely furious. Being an academic work you can be sure that I'll
get sod all financially for it anyway, without giving away free copies
to one and all. What I'm asking is, how much effort are you all putting
in to explain precisely to the publisher just where this electronic copy
is going to end up? How much time are you investing in reassuring the
publisher that their property--for that's what it is--is safe? Are you
making it fundamentally clear that if, in a year's time for example, a
mysterious copy suddenly starts materialising on the web or something,
you will be among the first to help with investigating whether your
student was responsible? Okay, this is deliberately being drastic, but
you know what I'm getting at. Try and keep in mind that this is
some-one's hard work, it's not just shareware.
Thirdly, how are you approaching these publishers? I'm asking this
because another obsession, along with legislation, is e-mail. In my
experience, forget it! Pick up the phone and make personal contact.
Even in the 21st century you might be surprised to learn that there are
plenty of people who prefer to get a feel for the person they are
dealing with, especially when there is nothing in it for them. The
other advantage of this is that you can be fairly sure that you will
reach the individual you really need; the person who really does have
access to the electronic files etc. If they can't tell you who that is
on the switchboard, persist with all departments you are put through to
until you get the right person. This is just old-fashioned telesales
technique. An airy-fairy e-mail "to whom it may concern" can easily
(and probably will) be ignored. More importantly even, if it does
happen to reach the right person, unless you have written a great deal
about why you really need this book, he/she will probably be more
suspicious than willing to help. Believe me, "dear sir/madam, I need
this copy of your book electronically for a visually-impaired student",
is almost certainly going to get you nowhere if it is addressed to a
publisher who doesn't know anything about visually-impaired students,
the way the education market now is, SENDA, and all other related
issues. It really is the equivalent of all these e-mails that one gets
asking whether you would mind some nice individual in Zimbabwe placing
10 million dollars in your personal bank account. Your request might be
more genuine, and you've probably got your badge of approval on the
bottom of your e-mail, but I'm not convinced that this counts for much.
My advice then is, at the intial stage anyway, pick up the phone and
talk to them. Publishers don't usually have two heads, any more than
blind people do.
One thing I can almost say for certain: at sometime over the next year
or so I am bound to come into contact with an intransigent publisher who
just doesn't give a damn, and doesn't even want to hear what I've got to
say. Then I'll be tempted to put a bit of the old legal pressure on
perhaps, just as one occasionally has to in other walks of life. On the
whole however, this would be so unusual in my experience, that I'm
simply not prepared to sit quiet and see all (even most) publishers
painted in the kind of colours that they have been on this forum of
late. I obtained my first ever electronic book from a publisher (Harper
Collins) way back in 1998. I had been given it to review for "The
Independent", and the editor had given me a very short
deadline--especially given that the quality of scanning in those days
was so dreadful that one could hardly read the results anyway. I was
also just about to go on holiday, so was left with about four days to
read the book, write the review and get it back to the Indy. A call to
Collins got me the book in the same afternoon--admittedly in Mac format,
which was, in those days, a bit of a sod to convert, but still better
than scanning--and I guess I've never looked back since. It was a
memorable moment for me because I realised that, as a blind book
reviewer for various publications, life really was about to get a lot
better, and so it has proved.
If anyone is interested in my running a workshop on how to obtain
e-books from publishers, let me know!!! I have to say in advance though
that the workshop would simply be entitled something like "common sense
and good manners", since that's all it amounts to in essence. "Experto
credite", as Virgil says.
Paul Jar man,
Learning Development Officer for Students with Disabilities, 400
Chemistry Building, Queen Mary College, University of London, Mile End
Road, LONDON. E1 INNS
Tel.: +44 (0)20 7882-3237
Fax: +44 (0)20 7882-5223
E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Baxter, Chris
Sent: 02 November 2005 09:57
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Update on electronic copies
Having bemoaned how difficult it was we have had some more success with
Pearson and other publishers, although not all books requested are
avaible a fair few are, so I wanted to let everyone know this in
fairness!
Chris Baxter
Disability Service Co-ordinator
The Nottingham Trent University
Burton Street
Nottingham
NG1 4BU
0115 8486163 voice and minicom
[log in to unmask]
www.ntu.ac.uk/sss/disability/index.html
[log in to unmask]
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