[Mabs] News from Bookshare.org (free to students)

[David Andrews]

>
>From: Lisa Friendly [mailto:lisaf at benetech.org] 
>Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2007 10:22 PM
>To: bksvol-discuss at freelists.org; bookshare-discuss at freelists.org 
>Subject: [bookshare-discuss] Great news about Bookshare.org
>
>Forwarded from Jim Fruchterman:
>
>I'm happy to share incredible news, which will transform
>Bookshare.org.
>On Friday, the Office of Special Education Programs of the U.S.
>federal
>Department of Education made a major five-year award of $32 million
>to
>Bookshare.org.
>
>This funding is to fully support all schools and students with
>qualifying print disabilities in the United States, K-12 and
>post-secondary, with access to the entire Bookshare.org collection
>of
>accessible electronic books and to software for reading those
>books.  As
>of October 1, 2007, we will cease charging these schools and
>students
>anything to join Bookshare.org as members. 
>
>In this initial news flash, I can't begin to share with you all of
>our
>plans for Bookshare.org now with this funding.  But, we are
>planning on
>adding more than 100,000 new educational books and materials to
>our
>existing collection of over 34,000 titles.  We are going to reach
>out to
>every student, every family with a disabled student, and every
>school in
>the U.S. to offer them the chance to join the Bookshare.org
>community
>and transform the practice of making books accessible.  We are
>going to
>coordinate with schools and publishers to deliver the best quality
>content possible and lower their costs in meeting our shared
>obligations
>to serve every student with a disability in the nation.  We expect
>to
>provide millions of books to students through this new program over
>the
>next five years, at a tenth or less of the historical cost of
>providing
>these services.
>
>
>And, we expect our improvements to serve all of these students will
>make
>Bookshare.org better for all of our Bookshare.org users.
>Bookshare.org's track record of being highly responsive to our
>members
>will be enhanced with significant funding to implement major
>improvements to our content and services.
>
>Our volunteer community is an essential part of what made this
>grant
>possible, and you are a crucial part to making this a success in
>the
>future.  Your commitment to our shared vision of better access to
>information is core to where we are heading.
>
>We want to make equal access to educational materials for disabled
>students a reality!
>
>Jim
>
>Jim Fruchterman
>
>President and CEO
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