Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 16, 2014

From people in Latin America who face severe water scarcity to at-risk human rights defenders and students with disabilities, our users and their families are the ones who best convey the impact of our work. Consider third grade student Brennan Draves. Brennan Draves and his mother, Lindsay Draves, at school. billion poor and unbanked.

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Open Source Linkedin Africa Student 183

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 12, 2014

I’m thrilled to share with you some of the recent amazing impact of Bookshare , a Benetech Global Literacy initiative and the largest accessible online library of copyrighted content for people with print disabilities. These milestones represent a giant leap forward in the number of students and individuals we serve.

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Literacy eBook Global Student 129

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 17, 2014

Bookshare: Solving the “Accessible Book Famine” Twelve years ago, we had an idea for recreating the traditional library for people with print disabilities—such as those who are blind, cannot physically turn the pages of a book, or have learning disabilities, like dyslexia—using the then-emerging technologies of digital books and crowdsourcing.

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Copyright Accessibility Library Law 196

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

It’s why the great majority of accessibility work is done by volunteers, charities, and with government support. The goal of the Treaty is to provide access to the great accessible libraries of wealthier countries, as well as make it legally possible to make local content accessible in each country. For what am I advocating?

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Copyright Library India United States 158

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 8, 2011

Led by Benetech’s VP of Engineering Gerardo Capiel, we will create an online space, SocialCoding4Good, where people in the tech community interested in social causes can volunteer ideas, connections, time and skills. It is the world’s largest online accessible library, adding books at nearly four times the rate of the next most prolific U.S.

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Guatemala Literacy Qatar Teach 159

TechCrunch

JANUARY 24, 2022

The startup, founded by Jackson Boyar and James Lu Morrissey , began by pairing up students with mentors virtually, and over time has added more structure and management to its marketplace. Mentor Collective finally began offering more predictable outcomes for students, he claims. The more important milestone?

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Mentoring Student Support Service 76

Tech Soup

FEBRUARY 21, 2013

As smartphones and tablets grow in popularity, mobile optimization is something libraries and nonprofits should pay close attention to in the coming year. Why should mobile be part of libraries and nonprofits' game plan? It begs the question: Why aren't more patrons accessing library sites on their mobile devices?

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Library Mobile Web Design 71

Have Fun - Do Good

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

When I was on vacation a few weeks ago , I had a dream that I was walking through a large public school library filled with students. There were so many students in the room that they were sitting on all of the window sills, and on the tops of bookshelves. Will you be volunteering this fall? Come on, Bravo!

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Volunteer Library Student Washington 62

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 7, 2010

An Insider Reveals How the Latest Hot Books Are Added to Bookshare’s Collection of Accessible Titles A Guest Beneblog by Liz Halperin After working for many years as a volunteer for Bookshare, I became a paid proofreader for the collection about two years ago. students thanks to support from the U.S. Bookshare members in the U.S.

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Community Student Files Volunteer 129

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Case in point: our accessible online library, Bookshare. Bookshare is the result of joint efforts of our partners in the education, technology, publishing, student, parent, and volunteer communities. Our technical tools by themselves don’t make change: it is these communities using our tools that create social good.

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Technology Charity Community Data 192

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 27, 2014

Zach Bryant The change happened when Zach was in high school and his Assistive Technology teacher introduced him to Benetech’s Bookshare library. When our team last caught up with him, he was a busy student at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, rejoicing in his ability to read independently and reach his full potential.

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Challenge eBook Social Ohio 144

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 12, 2009

But, our new Bookshare for Education project with its likely prospect of increasing our student users one hundredfold meant we needed a rebuild. We're dedicated to making sure that lack of access to books is no longer a barrier to success for print-disabled students! I'm also excited about our new logo! in the next few years.

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Student Accessibility Library Websites 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 27, 2013

To explain our approach, let’s look at Bookshare , our accessible online library for people with print disabilities. With support from stakeholders in the education, technology, publishing, student, parent, and volunteer communities, Benetech changed that reality. copyright law.

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Social Develop Library Project 144

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

Benetech's largest social enterprise is the Bookshare online library for people who are blind or otherwise disabled when it comes to reading print. which get Bookshare at no cost when serving students with qualifying disabilities (thanks to funding from the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. copyright law.

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Copyright Social Authoring Student 158

Tech Soup

NOVEMBER 16, 2011

Ever helpful, the team got on board to roll up their sleeves and pitch in at San Francisco Bay Area nonprofits that had big volunteer jobs. In the process, TechSoup learned just how much work goes into volunteer coordination (a lot!), They made good use of us as volunteers, in a rather spontaneous way."

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Volunteer Data San Francisco Social Media 59

NCE Social Media

OCTOBER 31, 2013

The first group was a group of 32 professionals who work or volunteer for nonprofit organizations through the Foundation Center located at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. The second group was a group of 18 graduate students in a Nonprofit Communications course at Point Park University.

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Reflection Social Media Measure Lecture 124

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 20, 2006

The goal of this repository is to ensure that students with print disabilities have easy access to textbooks. The goal of this on-line library is to stop the scanning of textbooks for K-12 education - a job which is now done by parents, teachers and students. The second challenge we encountered took place in Washington D.C.

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Washington Accessibility Student Library 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 13, 2011

Bookshare Hits 100,000 Members Boy reading at a computer with teacher in the background.Since the beginning of 2009, we’ve tripled the number of people with disabilities Bookshare is serving with our accessible library of ebooks. The amazing thing about serving 100,000 students right now is that our commitment to the U.S.

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Conservancy Student National Congo 140

Non Profit Quarterly

DECEMBER 14, 2021

We wanted to know how technology use has changed in volunteer management, especially through the pandemic. So, we assembled a research team at Arizona State University and set off on an ambitious research project to survey and interview volunteer managers across the U.S. Talking with Volunteer Administrators.

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Accessibility Technology Volunteer Language 118

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 4, 2007

It's great when one of our team is honored for their work, and Carrie Karnos has been one of our top Bookshare.org volunteers for years, including being Volunteer of the Year. She wrote, "Carrie Karnos is a Bookshare.org volunteer who has given blind readers access to more than 2,000 books. Carrie just received the James H.

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Award San Diego Library Literacy 100

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 8, 2010

Last month, I got a chance to talk with Nell Taylor, founder of the Chicago Underground Library. Our volunteers are the heart and soul and brains and heavy lifters (figuratively and-- when you have boxes of books involved-- literally) of our organization. Nell will be responding to comments on this blog and can also be reached here.

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Chicago Library Volunteer Culture 48

Tech Soup

MARCH 5, 2014

Pottsboro Area Library in Texas. We of course got lots of great stories, and our winner is the Pottsboro Area Library. When librarian Dianne Connery came to the library a few years ago, she found a classic small town library situated in a converted post office building with the requisite institutional green paint job.

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Library Story Digital Teen 54

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 3, 2016

Libraries for people who are blind or dyslexic are the primary source of accessible books in audio, large print or braille. But, some companies want to empty the library shelves and insist that only books that can’t be purchased are allowed to be stocked in such libraries. Bookshare was created under the Section 121 U.S.

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Copyright Library United States eBook 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 11, 2013

Our most recent initiative, SocialCoding4Good , and last week’s launch of its Corporate Partner Program , which offers companies a new, skills-based volunteering channel for employee engagement and their pro bono initiatives, is an example of this. The problem: our idea wouldn’t address the real challenge.

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Lesson Open Source Nonprofit Project 118

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 22, 2008

Department of Education includes overseeing OSEP, the people who are funding our Bookshare for Education project to serve every student with a print disability in the United States. John Crossman demonstrated the completely new version of the Bookshare on-line library, which is currently in the first round of beta tests.

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Guatemala Demonstration Education Washington 100

Forum One

DECEMBER 1, 2022

There are billions of historical documents housed in archives, museums, and libraries around the world. The vast majority of these documents do not have full-text transcriptions or indexed data, making them difficult to search and largely inaccessible to historians, students, scholars, and the general public.

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Search Build Online Museum 88

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 18, 2019

The nonprofit Benetech team built the revolutionary Bookshare library for this community, all online, and based on the powerfully flexible ebook. We named this library Bookshare because it was created with an army of crowdsourcing volunteers, many of them blind people themselves, who scan the books using optical character recognition.

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eBook Literacy Library United States 100

Candid

JANUARY 17, 2024

Audiobook and e-book library : Access thousands of fundraising- and nonprofit-related e-books and audiobooks, expertly curated by Candid’s librarians. Grants to Individuals : Students can use this resource to find grants intended to reduce student debt.

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Resource Accessibility Free Change 98

Tech Soup

JULY 15, 2011

Eligible nonprofits and libraries can now each request up to five bundles of MinoHD and UltraHD video cameras. With one-button operation and flip-out USB arm, even staff or volunteers with little technical knowledge can record, edit, and upload video to the web. Cisco has launched a new Flip Video donation program with TechSoup.

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Video Donation Program Cisco 69

Tech Soup

APRIL 25, 2014

Millions of low-income students rely on free or low-cost school meals. And there's a new free mobile app called Range that helps libraries, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and others working with youth locate those free meal sites this summer. Register for TechSoup for Libraries' upcoming free webinar on May 28.

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Feeds Free Help Hunger 78

Tech Soup

MARCH 26, 2013

In actuality, hackathons are events where ideas are hatched and technology needs are met — making them excellent opportunities for nonprofits, charities, and libraries! The hackathon model is ideal for nonprofits and libraries because it brings together motivated volunteers to expedite a project on a limited budget.

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District of Columbia Library Herzegovina Serbia 66

Tech Soup

OCTOBER 8, 2012

Many mobile gamification apps take advantage of your smartphone's built-in GPS features, allowing users to "check-in" when they volunteer, or earn points for walking a certain distance. rewards users for volunteering at local food banks, animal shelters and other organizations. Additional Resources.

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San Francisco Change Library Badge 60

Have Fun - Do Good

JUNE 10, 2011

I got Jamie's Food Revolution out of the library this week, and am excited to try some recipes. While writing a post about Five Father's Day Donation Gift Ideas for WE Volunteer, I came across the HeroRATs project on GlobalGiving. The rats are trained to sniff out landmines!

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Fun Tips Demonstration Exercise 64

Have Fun - Do Good

OCTOBER 9, 2013

Outside of his paid work, my dad organized CROP walks in our community, co-founded Martin House , volunteered with Habitat for Humanity and Witness for Peace , and visited elderly people at the local convalescent home who didn''t receive much company. I felt a blissful, joy-filled rush of connection to all things and all people.

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Sweden Hunger Library Homeless 66

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 3, 2008

This is a guest blog from Anna Reid, an Amherst student who interned with Bookshare.org International this past summer. One of the programs developed by Benetech is a digital library called Bookshare.org. I received a copy of her reflections and asked if I could share it with more people. www.bookshare.org.

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Accessibility India United States International 100

Qgiv

SEPTEMBER 2, 2024

Volunteer management software streamlines your volunteer recruitment, scheduling, and communication for a better volunteering experience. The features of Virtuous include: Donor signals Automation Volunteer mobilization Omni-channel campaigns Pricing Contact Virtuous for pricing. In fact, 67% of nonprofits use a CRM.

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Software Effective Nonprofit Volunteer 98

Tech Soup

AUGUST 12, 2011

Eligible nonprofits and libraries can now each request up to five bundles of MinoHD video cameras. With one-button operation and flip-out USB arm, even staff or volunteers with little technical knowledge can record, edit, and upload video to the web. Cisco has launched a new Flip Video donation program with TechSoup. About the Cameras.

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Video Donation Program Cisco 50