Welcome to The Scanners Guild Blog. Your time is valuable, and I’m glad you’ve stopped by. Without readers, a blog is just one person’s rants. Your thoughts and ideas are important to me, and I hope you’ll comment on posts that interest you.

My name is Monica Willyard, and I created this blog to talk about an exciting project that turns print books and newspapers into spoken words or Braille for people who are blind or who have a learning disability. It’s a service called Bookshare, and I’m a volunteer there. We’ve got somewhere around 18,000 members who can access over 39,000 books and several hundred local newspapers online. This service is completely legal and is provided for by a United States copyright law that allows a service to make print books readable for people who can’t read books. Many of Bookshare’s members are blind, and there are also people with learning disabilities and some people who can read but cannot physically hold a book due to an injury or cerebral palsy. Bookshare has a group of dedicated volunteers who scan and then proofread the scanned books before Bookshare’s tools turn the book into a Daisy audio file or a Braille file. Blind people use a Braille notetaker that is similar to a PDA or Palm Pilot for reading. The notetaker speaks and shows text in Braille as well.

If you or a family member are disabled, you can find out more about Bookshare by visiting Bookshare’s website. In fact, if you are a student, the Department Of Education has sponsored you with a grant so you can get a free membership. If you’re not a student, the yearly membership fee is low and works out to around $6 per month for the first year and $4 per month for following years. You pay more than that for a cup of coffee or a night at the movies. In exchange, you get access to over 39,000 books and newspapers from around the country. Finally, you can earn a Bookshare membership through working as a volunteer and earning membership credits.

If you love to read and wish you could turn that pleasure into something that can make life better for someone else, please consider becoming a volunteer. We need people from every background and at every level of computer knowledge,so don’t worry if the idea of scanning a book sounds like technology from outer space. We have both blind and sighted volunteers, and you don’t even need to own a scanner to help us in a big way. You’ll meet some friendly and talented people and join a supportive community that sees friendship as part of volunteering.

Oops. There goes my telephone, so I’m signing off for now. At any rate, feel free to poke around the site and explore the blogroll. I’m glad you’re here.