Bookshare.org to open up collection with $32 million grant

When Palo Alto resident Carrie Karnos landed the latest Harry Potter book minutes after its midnight release, the first thing she did was chop off its spine. Then she scanned, proofread and uploaded the book onto Bookshare.org, where by about 4:30 a.m. about 600 blind or dyslexic people immediately began reading it. Users download the books as digital files and listen to them with a voice synthesizer or read them on special Braille computers or via enlarged type.

This week, Palo Alto–based technology nonprofit Benetech announced it will be expanding its Bookshare.org project, the world’s largest collection of scanned books and periodicals, through its first federal grant. The U.S. Department of Education has awarded Bookshare $32 million over five years to open up its collection of more than 34,000 volumes free of charge to all blind or dyslexic students from kindergarten through graduate school.

The 5-year-old Bookshare already has 6,000 to 7,000 users, but that should increase to about 100,000 as a result of the grant, said Bookshare CEO Jim Fruchterman, who last year won a MacArthur Fellowship for his work. For details, go to MercuryNews.com.