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] This email is intended solely for the addressee. It may contain private and confidential information. If you are not the intended addressee, please take no action based on it nor show a copy to anyone. In this case, please reply to this email to highlight the error. Opinions and information in this email that do not relate to the official business of Nottingham Trent University shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by the University. Nottingham Trent University has taken steps to ensure that this email and any attachments are virus-free, but we do advise that the recipient should check that the email and its attachments are actually virus free. This is in keeping with good computing practice. This email is intended solely for the addressee. It may contain private and confidential information. If you are not the intended addressee, please take no action based on it nor show a copy to anyone. In this case, please reply to this email to highlight the error. Opinions and information in this email that do not relate to the official business of Nottingham Trent University shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by the University. Nottingham Trent University has taken steps to ensure that this email and any attachments are virus-free, but we do advise that the recipient should check that the email and its attachments are actually virus free. This is in keeping with good computing practice.