Having a problem with a file set? Contact us! Call 1-877-526-4622 or email us at nimac@aph.org.

The NIMAC and the NIMAS Technical Assistance Center at CAST need your assistance in helping publishers and their conversion houses prepare quality NIMAS file sets.

Creating NIMAS is still a relatively new process. It involves a learning curve for those creating the file sets, just as it does for those learning to use NIMAS to create student-ready formats. Publishers can only address problems in their file conversion processes when they know that such problems exist.

The NIMAC wants to ensure that the files provided by the repository are complete and high quality. While the NIMAC is able to ensure that every file in the repository is valid NIMAS, we do not have hard copies of any textbooks. There will always be some "best practices" coding issues or content problems that our quality control process is unable to detect. The NIMAC needs to be notified when significant content problems are found by users in order to require that the publisher submit a corrected file set.

To date, the NIMAC has received very few reports of these kinds of problems—less than one half of one percent of files downloaded. At the same time, it has been suggested to us that users are finding problems but not relaying this information back to the NIMAC or to publishers.

Also, in the interest of the continued development and improvement of the NIMAS specification itself, and of providing appropriate training resources for publishers and vendors, the NIMAS Technical Assistance Center at CAST needs to know what types of XML tagging or other “best practices” issues are also arising with file sets. They have received very little feedback regarding these problems.

Here is how we would ask that you report issues:

1. CONTENT Issues

Examples of such problems might be:

• missing portions of text (not included in either the XML OR in image files)
• missing images
• numerous typographical errors
• significant portions of text that do not match the print book with the identical ISBN

Please email nimac@aph.org with the following information:

• Your NIMAC user ID
• NIMAS Identifier for the file set
• Title of the book
• Specific information regarding the problem, including page numbers where problems were found
• What type of conversion (if any) you have done on the file set

2. TAGGING / Best Practices Issues

Examples of such problems might be:

• Page numbers not tagged
• Text embedded in images not included in XML
• Charts incorrectly tagged as lists, etc.

We ask that you send reports of these problems to chitchcock@cast.org and also copy nimac@aph.org. (Please include the same detailed information requested in the previous section.)

3. SOFTWARE / Conversion Issues

A third type of issue that continues to arise with working with NIMAS is the use of software that is incompatible with the NIMAS format (i.e., problems using the NIMAS file set that are not the result of a problem with the file set itself). While providing assistance in converting NIMAS into accessible formats is outside the scope of the NIMAC, we encourage users to contact the NIMAS Technical Assistance Center at CAST for guidance with these types of problems.  An example of this problem is the inability to open XML files in a specific program.

When in doubt as to who to contact with your problem, just give the NIMAC a call or send us an email!

We sincerely appreciate your cooperation and assistance in getting feedback to us regarding the file sets.