[Coco] Rainbow Books and other newsletters

[Michael Wayne Harwood]

This is a subject I have been thinking about.  We can take myself as an
easy example - some new guy jumps in a starts requesting people send him
their magazines to scan with nothing so far but promises.  The only thing
that I might have going in my favor is that I am the one negotioating a
legal licensing agreement with Lonnie Falk which makes me a bit easier to
hold accountible.

For this project the magazines will need to have their bindings removed,
further adding to the possible hesitation of volunteering magazines.

Here is what I propose:

Let me handle "warehousing" the magazines during the process.  I will keep
all of the magazines to be scanned and handle all of the logistics
regarding the scanner volunteers.  Persons who volunteer their magazines
will receive them back if possible (if they are not stolen, shredded in
the mail, etc) with the caveat that they will have their bindings removed.
 I will keep a public record of all the magazines "donated" on my web site
with names of who donated them.

When a person volunteers to scan a magazine they will consult with me and 
I will arrange an appropriate issue from the "needs" list to be scanned. 
If they have a magazine on hand that fits the bill so much the better, but
if they don't they will be shipped one from the stickpile that is ready to
go with it's binding and shipping label (on front usually) removed.  Once
a volunteer has finished a scan he will ship me the media with the
finished scans and the magazine.  Once received I will verify that we can
check that magazine off the list as being scanned and ship (if requested)
the magazine to the orginal owner.  If someone has donated more than one
magazine they would be shipped in multiples rather than one by one to save
shipping costs.

Each aspect of the project (OCR, post-production, etc) will be handled
similarly in that I will ship volunteers a single media of scanned
material to work on initially, and then expand their volume as trust is
established.

The amount of "issues" a person will be provided at a time will be
determined by the trust level that has been established and how quickly
they are able to get the assigned work done.  I certainly do not want to
hold up a person who is scanning excellent quality .tifs at the rate of 20
magazines a week, but there needs to be limits put in place as safeguards.

I want to take the time up front to organize this effort so that things
work as smoothly as possible.  This means that we will be getting things
hammered out over the next few weeks before things get rolling full steam.
 I have a lot of information to capture (volunteers, lists of magazines
and articles, scanning procedures and quality control, etc) and I want to
assign owners to specific tasks.  I am most likely the youngest in the
group as far as my 13 years working in the IT business, but I have been
involved in  enough large delpoyment projects to know that a little
pre-planning up front will reap large returns.

Thoughts?

Regards,
Michael Harwood

PS - Please forgive any spelling or grammatical errors - I am trying to
get this out via my web interface to my email.  Oh what a dependency on
spell check have I garnered!


> Thank You Mark,
>
> I posted this information as a warning.  Acccountability will need to be
> included in this project.
>
> As often happens in life, "If I'd have known then what I know now, , , ,