How to Use Caliber to Convert Bookshare Books Into ePub

Caliber is a free eBook conversion software that can convert Bookshare books into ePub format. ePub is the format used by most eReader. There are other methods of converting Bookshare books such as Don Johnston's Daisy to ePub software. (Click Here for article about Daisy to ePub)  Caliber is a free program for Mac and PC. Caliber can input and output many different book formats which makes it more versatile than Daisy to ePub. Converting a book using Daisy to ePub is easier then using Caliber.  The benefit of Caliber is that it is free and Daisy to ePub costs $99. When using Caliber you must first convert your Bookshare book into a PDF by copying the text and images of the book into word document and saving the document as a PDF. This step is necessary because PDF is one of the supported Caliber formats. The next step is to add the PDF into your Caliber library and convert it to ePub format. Once the book is in ePub you can put it on your iPad or other eReader. If you put your book onto the iPad you can use VoiceOver to listen to the book. Caliber is not perfect, sometimes the spacing and original formatting is not left intact. Even with its flaws Caliber is still a great tool for converting Bookshare books into ePubs. Watch the video above for step by step instructions.

New iBooks Read-Aloud Feature

Apple recently released an update to their iBooks app. The new version has a new feature called read aloud. At the moment the feature is only compatible with select children's books. In a compatible book there is a speaker in the top right corner. When the speaker button is pressed a menu appears with an option to read the book aloud. The read aloud feature highlights the words being read aloud so you can follow along. The voice that is used to read the text is a human voice, which is much better than a computerized voice. In all, the new feature in iBooks is great but is currently only for picture books.

Bookshare Reaches 100,000 Downloadable Titles

The accessible book download site Bookshare reached 100,000 downloadable books last week. In a blog post on Bookshare.org the organization announced reaching the 100,000 book milestone. If you are unfamiliar with Bookshare check out my blog post to learn about what Bookshare is an how to join. New books are being add all the time and that number is sure to rise.