About Bookshare.org

Indiana University Partners with Bookshare.org to Expand Access to College Textbooks for Students with Disabilities

PALO ALTO, Calif./Bloomington, Indiana, March 12, 2004 – Indiana University, one of the nation’s leading alternative text production facilities serving students with disabilities, has partnered with Bookshare.org, the leading online library serving individuals with reading-related disabilities, to make college textbooks available to students with disabilities nationwide.

Under the terms of the partnership, Indiana University will contribute all textbooks scanned in its production facility to the growing Bookshare.org library, the largest contribution of education-specific materials to Bookshare.org to date. These materials will be made available only to individuals with qualifying disabilities including visual impairments, mobility impairments, and learning disabilities such as dyslexia. Qualifying Bookshare.org members may access the materials online by becoming subscribers themselves, or through access sponsored by an organization such as a university or college.

The arrangement ensures that Indiana University students with qualifying disabilities will receive full access to the Bookshare.org collection of more than 16,000 books including required course materials, reference books and the latest best-sellers.

The Bookshare.org collection consists of books scanned by individuals and schools making print materials accessible using scanning and optical character recognition technology, as well as books contributed directly by publishers and authors in original digital forms. Indiana joins a number of schools nationwide in the effort to maximize the educational impact of Bookshare.org by sharing the textbooks they have scanned for their students. The scale and history of Indiana’s book-scanning operation – which has produced more than 1,800 books to date – promises to make Bookshare.org a key resource for students at post-secondary institutions.

“Bookshare.org’s online library of accessible materials has always had great promise for use by students,” Senior Product Manager Alison Lingane acknowledged. “And we expect that this partnership with a leader in the field like Indiana University will help further that promise.” Lingane noted that because textbook scanning is such a labor-intensive process, sharing by Indiana and other institutions will help ease the burden on providers of services to students with disabilities.

“We’ve spent several years developing a book scanning operation that can effectively meet the alternative text needs of our students with disabilities,” says Margaret Londergan, Manager, Adaptive Technology Center at Indiana University, “and we understand the effort and resources required to do so. So we’re very excited about the opportunity to share books through Bookshare.org, and decrease the duplication of effort at universities nationwide. As more institutions join us in partnering with Bookshare.org, the impact of our collective scanning efforts on educational opportunities for disabled students will only increase.”

About Bookshare.org

Bookshare.org offers a collection more than 16,000 accessible digital books to its subscribers. The books are protected by a comprehensive digital rights management plan, which was designed in collaboration with the Association of American Publishers and features extensive controls, including file encryption, watermarks, fingerprinting and a security watch program. Bookshare.org builds on 14-years of work in the adaptive technology field under the Arkenstone name.

Bookshare.org is a project of Benetech, an innovative Silicon Valley nonprofit that develops technology projects to address pressing social issues in areas such as disability, human rights, literacy, education and the digital divide. Many technologies have compelling social applications that are not developed because such efforts do not meet investors' financial expectations. Benetech specifically pursues endeavors with a strong social, rather than financial, rate of return on investment, bringing commercial technology and private sector management techniques to bear in creating innovative solutions to difficult social challenges.

The Adaptive Technology Center, a part of University Information Technology Services at Indiana University was established in 1999. Since that time technology based services for students with disabilities have grown to include provision of alternate media (Braille, MP3, electronic text, audio transcriptions), a laptop loaner program, a software loaner program, and deployment of a rich suite of adaptive software in many sites on campus. Training materials for adaptive software are currently under development using modularized video for those with dyslexia. Extensive individual and group training on use of adaptive hardware and software is provided through the Adaptive Technology Center. The class on web accessibility continues to be one of the most popular. Of particular interest is the ability of the Center to provide materials in alternate format in a timely manner to meet the needs of students with disabilities.

More Information

For additional information about Bookshare.org, please contact:

Alison Lingane
Senior Product Manager
tel: 650-475-5440 x122
Alison@bookshare.org

Bookshare.org was created and is maintained by Benetech, a nonprofit organization, and is Bobby-approved.
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The Bookshare trademark is used under license from its registered owner, Follett Library Resources division of Follett Corporation.