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Bookshare.org Demo Welcome! We are pleased to show you Bookshare.org: a new resource providing thousands of accessible digital
books to people in the U.S. with print disabilities (low vision, blindness, reading disabilities, and mobility
impairments) - a group numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Bookshare.org is a project of the
Benetech Initiative, a nonprofit organization. The
Benetech team originally developed the Arkenstone scanning and reading systems and through Bookshare.org now
enables users of scanning systems to share the books they scan.
This demo will give you an idea of how a Bookshare.org user accesses the books. At the bottom of this page, you
will find detailed instructions for searching for and downloading* books from the website.
Any visitor to the Bookshare.org website can download public domain books such as those listed below. Try the
HTML or Text format for a quick sample of a Bookshare.org book. This quick sample simplifies the experience of an
actual Bookshare.org user since it bypasses the download and unzip / decrypt steps.
Copyrighted books are only available for download in the specialized formats of digital Braille (BRF) and the
digital talking book format (DAISY), and are only available to people with disabilities who have provided
certification of disability.
*To save download time, we usually use a compression technology like PKzip to make the book
files smaller. The following examples are not zipped, to make it easier to quickly access a sample Bookshare.org
book if you don't have a Zip program installed.
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| Little Lord Fauntleroy |
by Frances Hodgson Burnett |
| Quality: |
Excellent, almost no errors. |
| Synopsis: |
none |
| Available Formats: |
BRF DAISY HTML Text |
| Membership not required for download (Public domain) |
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| Wuthering Heights |
by Emily Bronte |
| Quality: |
Excellent, almost no errors. |
| Synopsis: |
none |
| Available Formats: |
BRF DAISY HTML Text |
| Membership not required for download (Public domain) |
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People who are blind or have a reading disability can access the Bookshare.org books in different ways. One
common method is to listen to the book in the synthetic voice of a text to speech engine. This enables a blind
person who uses a talking PC to hear just about everything that a sighted person sees on the PC screen. Once the
blind person logs in and listens to our web page, he or she types in the search information, listens to the results
and then downloads the desired book. Sample Text to Speech Passage To listen to the sample speech passage, download the .wav file to your computer. If you already have a player
installed, opening the downloaded file will initiate the speech. Examples of players for ".wav" files include Winamp
and RealOne.
The passage below comes from Little Lord Fauntleroy, and gives you an example of what this book sounds like.
The text you will hear is "Cedric himself knew nothing whatever about it. It had never been even mentioned to him. He knew that his papa
had been an Englishman, because his mamma had told him so; but then his papa had died when he was so little a boy
that he could not remember very much about him, except that he was big, and had blue eyes and a long mustache, and
that it was a splendid thing to be carried around the room on his shoulder." Sample text to speech passage
Detailed Website Instructions
There are many things you can do on Bookshare.org without logging in as a member. You can search the full
collection of books, or you can download any public domain book.
Logging in is required by members to download copyrighted books, or by volunteers who are performing online
proofing and reviewing functions.
Downloading Public Domain Books
Search
Search for books using the search links in the tool bar area of any page: Title, Author, Category, or New.
The new search brings up the 100 books that were most recently added to the collection. Download public domain books
These are books that are out of copyright and available for download by anyone. You can recognize a
public domain book because it is available for download in HTML and TEXT formats in addition to DAISY and
BRF. DAISY and BRF are the legally-required "specialized formats for the disabled" and can be read using
assistive technology for people with visual or other print disabilities. For example, search by author for
Dickens to find a whole list of public domain books. Save the book on your computer in a folder of your
choice.
Here are 5 more public domain books you can download in zipped form, or search by authors such as
Twain, Verne,
and Shakespeare.
Unzip the book using your Zip program
To open the public domain books you will first need to unzip them. The books will be saved with a ".bks"
or possibly a ".bks.zip" extension, both of which should unzip with any Zip program. Winzip and PKUnzip are
two examples.
Becoming a Member
Copyrighted books can only be downloaded by members of Bookshare.org. Bookshare.org membership is available to
U.S. residents who have a visual or other reading disability.
Register
Register by clicking the Join link in the tool bar area of any page. This is the first step towards
membership. If you have scanned books that you can share, you can
submit them after registering. Submit Proof of Disability.
There are two options for providing proof of disability.
Option A: Have the proof of disability form signed by a qualified professional and mailed or faxed to
Bookshare.org.
Option B: This option is only for individuals who already receive services from the NLS network of
cooperating libraries (National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped). We can verify
directly with NLS that you receive services from them and accept this as eligibility for full Bookshare.org
membership. Pay for your subscription
For the $25 set up plus $50 annual fee you'll get 12 months of full access to the entire collection, with
no per book download fees - about $6 per month. Download the Unpack Tool
When you download copyrighted books, they are encrypted and compressed, what we call "Packed." The
Bookshare.org Unpack Tool easily opens these books and saves them on your drive in a location of your choice.
Download and install the Unpack tool before downloading your first copyrighted book. Download the DAISY player
A copy of the Victor Reader Soft Bookshare.org Edition, a computer software application for reading the
DAISY format digital books, is included in Bookshare.org membership. This software enables members to read
downloaded DAISY books, facilitates fast and easy navigation through a book, for example, by page or by
marking specific passages with bookmarks, and customizing the visual display for font size and background
color. Using screen reader software, a user can listen to the book with a synthetic voice.
This software is not the only way to access the Bookshare.org books. Read about other
ways to read the books.
Downloading Copyrighted Books
Search
Search for books using the search links in the tool bar area of any page: Title, Author, Category, or New.
The New search brings up the 100 books that were most recently added to the collection, and is a way for
members to watch as the latest bestsellers are made available. Download copyrighted books
If the book is copyrighted, there is no text or HTML format available. Instead, download the BRF (digital
Braille) or the DAISY (digital talking book) format of the book.
Save the book on your computer in a folder of your choice. The file will have the extension ".bks".
This is the extension of the encrypted or "packed" book. Unpack the book using the Bookshare.org Unpack Tool
You can either double click on the book itself, or start the Bookshare.org Unpack Tool directly from the
Start / Program / Bookshare.org menu in Windows. From within the Unpack Tool, you will need to select the
directory in which you want to save the book.
You will be asked for your member password during the Unpack process. This is the password you use to
login on the website. Use the software or portable device of your choosing to read the book
For more information on different options for using the Bookshare.org books, visit the Book
Support Page. Remember: Members can download books and read them in the device or format of their
choice for their own use, but are not allowed to give the books to somebody else.
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