[Athen] Barnes and Noble and Accessible Information

Wink Harner foreigntype at gmail.com
Thu Oct 22 13:05:05 PDT 2015


Hi all ATHENITES,

In Shawn's defense, we had a great relationship when the bookstore was owned
by SOU before Barnes & Noble bought it out. It wasn't perfect by any means,
but it was reasonably doable to get the booklist from the bookstore and
import it into AIMS because we had a good working relationship with the
bookstore. It was still a lot of work! That being said, it was trickier to
get permission once Barnes & Noble picked up the franchise on the campus, as
we had to deal with a national bureaucracy. Many hoops to jump through. The
suggestion of working out an MOU contract with the franchise itself may be
harder in the short run but so much better in the long run. It is neither
automatic nor easy. But having the agreement, regardless of whether BN
believes their booklists to be proprietary or not (hey, once they're in the
bookstore, where is proprietary?), the booklists used in AIMS to be used for
students with disabilities & alternative text production is not nearly as
legally protected as "proprietary" as BN might think. When I was in Arizona,
we had worked out an MOU with E Follett bookstores which had the franchise
on all of our community college campuses. There, it had more to do with the
availability of hard copy versus eCopy, buyback of books used for alt text
that had been cut and rebound at the same price as any used book would be
returned. Previously, students who brought back books which had been caught
in rebound got nothing.

Hope this is helpful.

Wink

Wink Harner
Adaptive Technology Consulting & Training
Alternative Text & Media Production
The Foreigntype

foreigntype at gmail.com
winkharner1113 at gmail.com

(Disclaimer: this email was dictated with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Please
forgive any quirks, mis-recognitions, or omissions.)



-----Original Message-----
From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On
Behalf Of Kimberley Smith
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2015 12:42 PM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Athen] Barnes and Noble and Accessible Information

I think Shawn's experience may be an outlier since I asked about just this
issue in the Spring (we started with AIM over a year ago and like other
aspects). Our school's B&N refused to ever do that. The national B&N
headquarters said the data was "proprietary" (?!) I would suggest as Shawn
does to put that in your bookstore contract or you will still be doing all
that by hand (or having student's enter it by hand and then having to verify
every aspect...

Kimberley J. Smith
Access Specialist, Disabilities Resource Center Santa Fe College
3000 NW 83rd St.
Building S, room 233
Gainesville, FL 32606
352-395-4429 (voice)
352-395-4100 (fax)

kimberley.smith at sfcollege.edu
http://www.sfcollege.edu/student/drc/

========
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2015 09:24:01 -0700
From: Shawn Foster <fosters at sou.edu>
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Barnes and Noble and Accessible Information Management
Message-ID:
<CALV2pm9MV7d=HCq7cAHyua=BzxwBRTXC3GhWJEQKfSqd2YXdiw at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

The biggest problem with the whole equation isn't AIM- they can totally work
with a csv file upload and it's quite easy to do. The biggest problem is the
delays involved in getting information out of Barnes and Noble.
Here's how that process works here (assuming, of course, that faculty have
all been good people and put their book orders in on time...a big
assumption!):

1. I email bookstore manager to ask for booklist 2. Bookstore manager emails
their corporate office to ask for approval.
3. File goes to the regional manager for approval 4. File gets sent to
bookstore manager 5. Bookstore manager sends me file 6. I do quick cleanup
and upload 7. Booklist changes because faculty changed their mind on a book
or were late in adding their orders - start at 1 again.

If you're in the negotiation process for their contract, push for a more
direct system. This one is ridiculous.
Good luck!
Shawn


*Shawn Foster*

Disability Resources Coordinator | U-CAM Coordinator

Southern Oregon University | 1250 Siskiyou Blvd | Ashland OR 97520
541-552-6213


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