2018-04-11 19:15:20

I received the following message in my inbox and thought that people should have a look see if this has not been seen before. Just wonder how well this will work for them. LOL.

To enhance security of patron accounts and prevent misuse, NLS will be making the following change: 

Any patron account that has not been used in one year or more will be moved to an Inactive/Suspended status. Each day, BARD will check to see if a patron account was last used more than one year ago. When BARD identifies unused accounts, these accounts will be moved to the Inactive/Suspended status. Any BARD account that holds the status of Inactive/Suspended can be reactivated quickly and easily by a library administrator. 

To prevent this from happening to your account, simply use the service, that’s it. 

If for any reason you find yourself locked out of your account, please contact your cooperating NLS library. 

We look forward to serving you for a long time to come.

The BARD Support Team

Send comments, questions, or concerns to
[email protected]

To anyone who use this survice, you have been worned. LOL.

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral

2018-04-11 19:20:07

I didn't get this... yep, a sweep of my inbox reveals nothing from them.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-04-11 19:35:01

I can't think of how this would help them honestly. Like, what does this suspended status do for them, stop emails? Well, I wouldn't know about that since the email associated with my NLS account is like way out of date and not available to me anymore. I don't remember them mailing people a lot to begin with. The mobile app doesn't send push notifications, hell, it can't even use cell data, has to be WiFI. So, I don't see the angle here, what this is being used to do, or stop from happening. It just seems like an administrative decision with nothing backing it. Not that there is anything wrong with it, I'm just trying to figure out what prompted this.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-04-11 20:50:12

I have received no notices from them and the information they have on me is current.

I suspect that some old unused accounts got hacked or something so they feel they are closing a possible security issue by doing this.

Back when I was a forum administrator, once a month I pruned accounts that had no postings and hadn't been accessed for more than six months. So I can understand their motivations, whatever they are.

2018-04-13 03:00:25

I haven't received anything, either, although I rarely use Bard these days. Still, I like knowing that it's there on the rare occasions I do need it, since I prefer Bookshare most of the time. This is kind of a dumb move in my opinion. It doesn't make sense, as everyone else has said. I'll make sure to log into my account, though.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-04-13 05:21:31

Actually, the only security measure I've seen BARD use, besides enforcing fairly strong passwords is to force you to change your password, but I've seen them do that only once in the almost five years I've been using tham.

And, for what it's worth, I prefer BARD's audio recordings of a real person reading the book over Book Share's having a TTS voice do it. But I will use Book Share for books that BARD doesn't have because a TTS voice reading a book is better than no book to listen to.

2018-04-13 06:45:38

Well, the reason I prefer Bookshare is because I prefer to read my books in Braille. They usually are my go to if I need a book in brf format. While BARD sometimes has things that Bookshare doesn't, I've found the reverse to be true in most cases that I'm looking for, so Bookshare is the first place I go.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-04-13 12:47:12

I guess that one of the reasons why I received the message might have been due to the fact I signed up to a bard mailing list while back. If I remember right, the mailing list became an announcement only list. For BRF, I use BookShare and for audio, I use bard. The only benefit I see is some unused account will not be available to be hacked into. Beyond that, they do not get any benefits that I see. As I recall, I seen that in this topic before. LOL.

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral

2018-04-13 14:15:19

Ah! That makes sense, though doesn't BARD also have books in Braille? Or are they not in BRF format?

I've only been blind for the last five years, and with all this technology I don't see Braille as a necessity. Now if I had lost my vision 30 or more years ago, that would be a different story altogether.

2018-04-13 20:35:00

The braille that they have for download is in BRF. As far as I can tell, they take care to make sure that  the translation and layout is right. BookShare on the other hand has more books in BRF, but the files are a bit more prone to errors of some kind seeing that the OCR errors are not always caught by the proof readers. So, it comes down to the question of do you want more books to read or more books that have been proofed to a high stander. I do not know about bard, but BookShare has been known to accept EBooks from the publisher. Anyway, that is sort of the main differences there. HTH
As a side note, I can get books from BookShare in a text based daizie format that can be read by apps like Voice Dream Reader where as bard offers books in a audio format. At least we got choices. Of course, there is RFBD aka learn ally, that offers school type books in audio. LOL.

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral

2018-04-13 23:28:43

One of the reasons I prefer BARD to Book Share is that Book Share seems to accept anything. I once got a book from them that was so poorly done that at every page change, you lost several lines of the text to the OCR getting all screwed up on the page break, and it took those several lines to get itself sorted out.

2018-04-14 00:10:29

LOL. Most of the books I got from BookShare did not have that problem, but I came across enough to know that it can happen, more than I wish it would. You pretty much have to do an advance search and tell BookShare to leave out the poor ones. That narrow the search a bit, but it is something to be aware of. It is also worth noting that BookShare needs to be made aware of that problem when we come across them. I am thankfull that Bard does not have that problem.

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral

2018-04-14 02:01:28

I've had problems like that with bookshare before too. For instance, Roberts Rules of Order (a good book, IMO) looks absolutely loathsome compared to the actual thing. I use Bookshare for fiction-based books, which I can read very quickly -- within a week, at most -- but for my technological books, I no longer go to Bookshare for them purely because the quality of the Bookshare versions pale in comparison to the quality of the actually purchased eText, which looks a lot better (and is a lot easier to navigate).

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-04-14 05:06:04

I used to have that problem more often with Bookshare, but most of the books I've gotten from them within the past 5 years or so have been good quality. These are, in the vast majority of cases, fiction books, mind you, so I'm not sure about textbooks or anything of that nature. It is true that it's much easier to find a newer title on Bookshare than it is on Bard. On the other hand, NLS does have Braille Book Review, which I used to read faithfully until I stopped reading as many books. But that was where I used to get most of my recommendations from, and, of course, I would get the actual brf books from Bard in that case. Actually, in those days it was Web Braille, but it was essentially the same thing.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-04-14 11:09:45 (edited by Orko 2018-04-14 11:11:16)

I am aware of Book Share filtering capabilities, unfortunately, the Victor Reader doesn't support it, nor does it support reporting the quality of books, and finaly it doesn't support Book Share's reading list or whatever they call the list where you put books you want to read.

In those respects, the Victor Reader's Book Share support pales in comparison to its BARD support.