Community reviews for Bookshare

Great source for e-books and downloadable easy to follow pdf's.

Bookshare is a growing collection of over 300,000 titles. Several aides that have used this resource are amazed how many of the textbooks and class materials they can access through this website. Not only are books available, but so are newspapers and magazines. Bookshare is pretty easy to set up and get started. The majority of your time will be spent searching through the vast titles, unless you have a specific title in mind. Books can be searched by title, author and even ISBN. Bookshare offers a plethora of help on their website as well as a contact number to help resolve any issues or answer any questions. Finding this resource was like discovering a gold mine for students with print and learning disablities.

This product is not easy to install and begin using. It is not intuitive, and many parents need support from the school to get started. While it is an excellent tool for students with reading disabilities, most of my students would prefer to here an actor's voice as opposed to a computer.

Overall, I see Bookshare as a rather incredible platform. While I am uncertain as to the level in which my non-readers will interface with the website, I do feel confident that our highly motivated and self-regulated students will rely on the site to assist with reading fluency and access to reading materials once the student is in the safety of his or her own home. I have ways been a fan of technology that can continue to "teach" while the teacher is away (primarily during homework hours). As such, I look forward to recommending this product to our families and students as the new year approaches. My hope is the our families will begin to integrate the use of this website to increase student productivity and engagement in class. By assigning a specific reading prior to class, a student need only log in. Once the student gets to class he or she will have the opportunity to share what was read, reviewed and learned. The largest stumbling block or difficulty lies in creating new user accounts and downloading texts. Other than that, Bookshare gets two thumbs up in my book!

Bookshare is an incredible resource for readers with print disabilities. Their library is large and they are very responsive to requests for books they currently do not have. While setting up an account can be a bit of a task (besides the online registration, a signed form must be faxed in confirming the disability, agreeing to follow the copyright rules and parental permission when necessary). Individual members must have a personal email account (or use a parent's) to access the service. Downloading texts with images can be difficult for users with iOS and Android devices as the apps won't directly access the files with images. It is necessary to use a third party download app if you want images on the portable device, an extra step which can cause issues especially on textbooks that require the graphics for understanding. In addition, NIMAC sourced textbooks require the teacher to download the book and transfer to the student due to copyright regulations. Again, this adds a burden to the teacher and inhibits student independence. My main complaint is when a text book is supplied by request, the Daisy file tends to omit the graphics and images. Most books are scanned into Bookshare when not provided digitally by the publisher and the loss of images can negatively impact the student's understanding of the text. Failing to include the images when scanning should not be as common as it is. Overall though, Bookshare is an incredible service and highly recommended. As digital texts become more and more common, this mostly free resource is invaluable to students with print disabilities.