Welcome to the Bookshare Product Ideas Forum! This is a new area for you to suggest your ideas for Bookshare to consider as part of the product roadmap and vote on ideas that others have already submitted! We are excited to hear your thoughts!
If you are looking for Technical Support or have questions about Bookshare, please use the Contact Us form on http://www.bookshare.org/contactUs.
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174 votes
Make Bookshare available available on iPad
Status: under reviewWe are currently investigating the iPhone/iTouch/iPad as an option to deliver Bookshare books, if you can comment on how and where you use these tools it helps us understand how the application should best be developed (types of books, school/home, type of accessibility capabilities).
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64 votes
Make Bookshare available on iPhone
Status: under reviewWe are currently investigating the iPhone/iTouch/iPad as an option to deliver Bookshare books, if you can comment on how and where you use these tools it helps us understand how the application should best be developed (types of books, school/home, type of accessibility capabilities).
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49 votes
Make it easier to find downloaded books
Status: under reviewPlease add more specifics on your issues so we can better address the problems!
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47 votes
Provide grade appropriate title suggestions
Status: under reviewWe get very little grade level information currently and what we do get varies by source. In our work to improve our metadata, we will look at grade level data and see how much we can improve it!
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39 votes
Make books downloadable in ePub format.
Making books available in ePub formate would make syncing with eReaders much quicker and better.
Status: under reviewAt this point we don't provide ePub as it violates the Chafee amendment requiring that books be "distributed in specialized formats exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities." That said we are looking at ways to serve a broader community of users that need alternative formats.
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35 votes
Make Bookshare part of the new Blio reader.
Status: under reviewWe are in contact with the Blio team and as soon as they launch we will work to see if they are able to support the DAISY 3 standard to read books.
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30 votes
Make less mistakes in books that are BRF file
Bookshare does have a great selection of books but does not look carefully evough at the mistakes made in the braille format of the books. Mistakes include mispelling and misuse of contractions. Not being able to tell what some words are and other things.
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29 votes
read bookshare books with your web browser
Status: startedWe are working on a Firefox add-on called AnyDaisy that will allow you to read Bookshare books in your browser.
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26 votes
Create One-Stop Search Tool for Volunteers
When deciding whether or not to scan a book volunteers should be able to key in the title, author name and do One search to pull up info on whether it is in the collection, on the books being scanned list, on the checkout list, in process, with one of our outsourcers, or being handled by a publis... more
Status: under reviewThis is under review for work. I will work with the volunteer team and through VAT to make sure we get it right!
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21 votes
Allow digital signatures on Proof of Disability (POD)
From NFB member party via Allison Hilliker
The ability to digitally/electronically sign our proof of disability form.
This suggestion came from an AT trainer. Folks with print disabilities can't access our print form and therefore can't sign up their students/clients independently.Status: under reviewWe are considering this possibility, there are some legal challenges we'll have to review.
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21 votes
Add more magazines on the site
(NFB members party courtesy of Allison Hilliker)
Status: under reviewSpecific magazines would be helpful to know if you can add comments here. Just a note: we currently get all of our periodicals and magazines through NFB-Newsline. It's also a good idea to file any sort of book/collection request in http://www.bookshare.org/contactUs
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19 votes
Make illustrations viewable.
In many childen's books, illustrations are extremely important to the story. The books don't make sense unless you see the pictures.
Status: startedWe actually do provide images in our books, but only in those that the source provider supplies them. So today we get those primarily from NIMAC books, but also oftentimes from publisher books. Scanned books today do not maintain the images though we are evaluating the ability to do so.
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17 votes
connect bookshare with other book sites like Project Gutenberg and Open Library
Add to Bookshare's library with the help of accessible on-line project's like Project Gutenberg and the Open Library.
Status: under reviewThis is something we are very keen to make happen, our first step is that our collection is available via a public API that anyone can use on their own site. We also need to work with other to develop a common way to share information and that's what we're evaluating! Keep adding collections you use most frequently to help us prioritize!
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15 votes
make an RSS feed of Recent Books available
Status: plannedAbsolutely agree! We want to provide it by recent and by categories, and would love to hear other ideas about how you'd like your feeds parsed.
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10 votes
Add catalogue numbers and subject headings from standard library databases
Status: under reviewWe are investigating the incorporation of MARC and library subject headings into the library.
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9 votes
Include visuals in textbooks including graphs, maps and pictures.
Some visuals are importent to the meaning of the text.
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8 votes
Allow ability to filter foreign language titles
(NFB member party, courtesy of Allison Hilliker)
Ability to set individual account preferences to filter out foreign
language titles on the New Books pageStatus: under reviewWe are going to be looking at improving search filters and feeds soon and will consider this
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8 votes
Insert a field for holds when submitting scans instead of in title.
Status: under reviewWe are working to improve the inbound "pipeline" and workflow for processing books
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8 votes
Allow volunteers who release books to comment on why
It would be very helpful to know why people release books; problems, taste, time, etc.
Status: under reviewWe are working to improve the inbound "pipeline" and workflow for processing books
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7 votes
I would like to see if I've already downloaded a book and in what format
Status: under reviewIn "My Account" and "My Book History" you can see your book download history. If there are improvements to this you'd like to see, please add comments to this idea.
