At some point today, probably this afternoon, BookShare.org will have both electronic Braille and DAISY copies of the new Harry Potter book available for download. This is very notable, since in the past, getting the newest best seller for a blind person has been challenging, since it could take anywhere from several months to an entire year to get the books through the state or regional library for the blind. Now however, we get the books through services like Book Share, only hours after they're released to the public. To everyone that will download the new book from Book Share, I say, "Cheers!"
On the topic of Book Share, there's an interesting article called, Books Ripped Up, Fed to Online Library for the Blind. Though I can understand the reservations that some may have in ripping up books in order to scan them, consider this: by ripping that book and scanning it, and then by submitting it to Book Share, who knows how many blind or other qualifying people with disabilities might read it. In other words, would you rather one Harry Potter be ripped up for many blind people to read, or hundreds or even thousands of books, for the same purpose? Personally, I'd take my chances with the one. After all, when you consider that millions of these books were pre-ordered, and millions more will be sold, is the destruction of one or two books really make that much difference?
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Unbinding books really shouldn't be a big deal; they can always be rebound. Besides, a book edge scanner such as the Plustek OpticBook 3600 should work just fine for scanning books without need of unbinding.
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