[Athen] Information on E-Text Production Database?

[Ron Stewart]

We all come at this from a little different perspective, 

 


>From my experience when you exceed about 50k pages per academic period I

don't think excel can continue to give you the level of detail and data
collection your administration is going to require if they take a look at
your resource expenditure.  A more sophisticated system will also provide
you with a good tracking system for your entire program from book tracking,
Copywrite oversight and tracking your workers.   Gaeir and I discuss this in
some depth in our "Advanced" Etext Institute which will also be offered at
AHG in November as well as other times during the coming year.  I am looking
at model systems to add to the AHEAD resource site as well.

 

Perhaps a move to Access, as we did initially at OSU will take you to the
next level but eventually I think a real database is going to be needed.
MySQL served us well after some fits and starts for several years and
provided not only alt format, but captioning and AT tracking as well across
a large system.  SharePoint is great if you can afford it.  AMAC as Bob
mentioned has one of the most sophisticated systems I have seen and while it
may be overkill for a lot I think it is worth taking a look at along with
the system the CSU-CAM has developed.  

 

What you want to avoid at all costs is having to go back and reinvent the
wheel several times as your program grows and develops.  Also as more
regional centers and consortia develop having a system that is easily
integrated into the larger systems already in place is going to save a lot
of us a lot of headaches down the road.  

 

Lessons learned the hard way, or from someone else's trials and tribulations
are the best lessons, or as Einstein so apply put:

 

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different
results. 



Ron Stewart 

 

From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Kelmer, Susan M.
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 9:28 AM
To: Access Technologists in Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] Information on E-Text Production Database?

 

The AMX system will work for that, but it is cumbersome as well, as you have
to enter all the data.  I think no matter what you come up with, you are
going to have a cumbersome system.

 

I am keeping simple records in an excel database, it seems to work for us.
My conversion clerks write down how much time they spend on each particular
aspect (scanning, ocr, text-cleanup) to the nearest 15-minutes.  It gives me
a pretty good read on how long it takes to convert things, although I don't
really care as much about the little parts as I do the big picture.  Our
goal here is a 4-day turnaround, and if we make it within four days I'm
happy, five days I'm satisfied, any more than that and I'm looking to see
where we can improve.

 

I will be presenting a lot of the information on how we do this here at the
Accessing Higher Ground conference in Boulder in November.  Hope you can
make it, it will be a worthwhile lecture.

 

Susan Kelmer

Adaptive Technology Specialist/

Lab Coordinator, Campus Labs and Classrooms

St. Louis Community College - Meramec

314-984-7951

 

From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Balen, Tim
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 8:33 PM
To: athen at athenpro.org
Subject: [Athen] Information on E-Text Production Database?

 

Colleagues,

 

I'm looking for advice or suggestions on creating a database for tracking
e-text production.  We are working on one now within our office, but I am
concerned it is becoming cumbersome and labor intensive.  Essentially we are
looking to record and store, completed text conversions, conversions in
progress, time spent per conversion & per editor.  Any information would be
appreciated on or off the list.

 

Thank You!

 

Tim Balen

 

Washington State University

509-335-7904

www.drc.wsu.edu

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/pipermail/athen-list/attachments/20080815/036999eb/attachment.html>