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Wikibooks

Screenshot of wikibooks.org home page
URL	www.wikibooks.org
Slogan	Open books for an open world
Commercial?	No
Type of site	Textbooks wiki
Registration	Optional
Available language(s)	multilingual
Owner	Wikimedia Foundation
Created by	Karl Wick and the Wikimedia Community
Launched	July 10, 2003
Alexa rank	2,348[1]
Current status	Active

Wikibooks (previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks) is a Wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation for the creation of free content textbooks and annotated texts that anyone can edit.

History

Wikibooks was launched on July 10, 2003, in response to a request made by Wikipedia contributor Karl Wick for a project to host and build free textbooks on subjects such as organic chemistry and physics. Two major sub-projects, Wikijunior and Wikiversity, were created within Wikibooks before its official policy was later changed so that future incubator type projects are started according to the Wikimedia Foundation's new project policy. In August 2006, Wikiversity became an independent Wikimedia Foundation project.

Wikijunior

Wikijunior is a subproject of Wikibooks that specializes in books for children. The project consists of both a magazine and a website, and is currently being developed in English, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. It is funded by a grant from the Beck Foundation.

Book content

Growth of the eight largest Wikibooks sites (by language), July 2003 – Jan 2008

While some books are original, others began as text copied over from other sources of free content textbooks found on the Internet. All of the site's content is covered by a Creative Commons license. This means that, as with its sister project, Wikipedia, contributions remain copyrighted to their creators, while the copyleft licensing ensures that the content will always remain freely distributable and reproducible.

Wikibooks differs from Wikisource in that content on Wikibooks is expected to be significantly changed by participants. Raw source documents such as the original text of Shakespearean plays are hosted on Wikisource instead.

The project is working towards completion of several textbooks in numerous human languages, which founders hope will be followed by mainstream adoption and use of text developed and housed there.

See also

• Digital library (or Virtual library)
• e-book
• Elibrary
• Global Text
• ibiblio
• Open Content Alliance
• Open hardware
• The European Library
• Universal library
• Free High School Science Texts

References

• Ben Crowell (2005). "All Systems Go: The Newly Emerging Infrastructure to Support Free Books". http://www.lightandmatter.com/article/infrastructure.html. Retrieved June 18, 2006.  
• Michael F. Shaughnessy (2009-07-14). "An Interview with Curtis Bonk: A Look at Wikibooks and Wikibookians". EducationNews.org. http://www.ednews.org/articles/an-interview-with-curtis-bonk-a-look-at-wikibooks-and-wikibookians.html.  

External links

• English Wikibooks' Main Page
• Wikibooks' multilingual portal
• Wikibooks Language Editions: list of Wikibooks for various languages ordered by size.
• Wikibooks page on Meta-Wiki
• Wikibooks takes on textbook industry

From Wikiversity

Wikibooks, previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks, is a wiki for the creation of free content books. It is a Wikimedia Foundation project. Wikibooks is a Wikimedia project that was started on July 10, 2003 with the mission to create a free collection of open-content textbooks that anyone can edit. Since its founding, volunteers have written over 38,000 modules in a multitude of textbooks.

What is the difference between Wikibooks and Wikiversity?

Wikibooks hosts textbooks. Wikiversity does not host textbooks. Wikiversity started at Wikibooks, but later evolved into separate project. Wikiversity is for types of learning resources that are not hosted by other Wikimedia projects. Wikiversity is exploring ways to use wiki technology to support learning communities.

"...the idea here is to also host learning communities, so people who are actually trying to learn, actually have a place to come and interact and help each other figure out how to learn things. We're also going to be hosting and fostering research into how these kinds of things can be used more effectively." (source)

How can Wikiversity and Wikibooks complement each other?

Wikiversity participants can learn about a topic and then use what they have learned to improve textbooks at Wikibooks or encyclopedia articles at Wikipedia. Helping make textbooks and encyclopedia articles are just two types of learning activities. Many other types of learning activities are being explored at Wikiversity. Take a look at Category:Learning activities.

Many Wikiversity schools, divisions, departments and learning resources have a "Wikibooks" section that links directly to relevant subjects at Wikibooks. See Wikiversity and Wikibooks services for more ways to help Wikiversity and Wikibooks complement each other.

Ideas for classroom use

Several classes at brick-and-mortar University have utilized Wikibooks for a "real world" class. For example Ethnomedicine was created in a vigorous and rather astonishing fashion. It facilitated both the learning of the individuals of the class, and also made valuable information available for others to use.

You could create a syllabus for your class here at Wikiversity, and then have students create a book as a study or homework tool over at Wikibooks. All of this content would be available for the free use by others at a later date. You can use the protected course template to ensure pages for your students remain consistent with your intentions for the duration of the course.

Wikiversity is still rather new, and you are encouraged to be creative in the ways that you utilize Wikibooks and Wikiversity for your learning goals.

Organization of Wikibooks

Textbooks at Wikibooks are broken into 8 major subjects, which are then further subdivided into more specific subjects in a hierarchical manner. Each subject page corresponds to a different subject area such as mathematics, computer science, or history. Books on Wikibooks are also organized into alphabetical, Dewey-Decimal, and Library of Congress classification categories, which may be browsed independently from the subjects.

Books for children from birth until age 12 are located in Wikijunior, a sub-project of Wikibooks. Wikijunior books encompass material from all subjects, and are specifically written for children. Some Wikijunior books are intended to accompany a classroom learning atmosphere, but many books are useful for at-home learning between parent and child.

See also

• Wikiversity:Service community
• Wikiversity and Wikibooks services
• Wikibooks research

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Wikibooks is a collection of open-content textbooks that anyone, including you, can edit right now by clicking on the edit this page link that appears near the top of each Wikibooks module. Contributors maintain the property rights to their contributions, while the GNU Free Documentation License and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License makes sure that the submitted version and its derivative works will always remain freely distributable and reproducible. See Wikibooks:Copyrights for more information. Wikibooks went online on 10 July 2003.

See Wikibooks:Collections Preface for an introduction to this project intended to be printed and distributed to readers, especially as part of a collection.

Note: In order to properly educate students in various disciplines (in particular the medical sciences), some Wikibooks have content that may be considered offensive, vulgar or profane by some readers. See the content disclaimer for more information.

More about Wikibooks

• Welcome, newcomers - Basic information for new visitors and how to use the site
• What is Wikibooks? - what Wikibooks includes, and what it does not include
• History of Wikibooks - A brief guide to the origins of this project.
• Wikibooks, a Wikipedia article about Wikibooks and its history.
• Wikimedia Foundation, a Wikipedia article about the non-profit parent organization of Wikibooks.
• Frequently asked questions

Exploring Wikibooks

• Recent changes, see modules that are being worked on right now.
• Random page
• New modules
• Reading room, a place to ask for help or introduce yourself.
• Featured books, see the best of Wikibooks.

Contributing to Wikibooks

• How to start a new page or book
• How to edit a page
• Help:Why contribute?
• Help pages
• Policies and guidelines for contributors
• Wikibooks maintenance - list of all cleanup and maintenance tasks

Getting in touch

• Wikibooks:Contact us
• Reading room, a forum to ask questions not answered in the FAQs or help pages.
• IRC channels - the fastest way to contact other Wikibookians
• Wikibooks mailing lists
• Wikibookians, list of Wikibooks' contributors.
• Meta, a site that works alongside the main Wikibooks project. Here you can post essays and discussions about topics related to Wikibooks.
• Bulletin board The place to look for news

Other Wikimedia projects

• Meta-wiki, a wiki devoted to planning various Wikimedia projects. (See Meta for background)
• Wikinews, a free-content news source
• Wikipedia, a multilanguage encyclopedia with supporting almanac-like information. (See Wikipedia for background)
• Wiktionary, a multilingual Wiki dictionary and thesaurus. (See Wiktionary for background)
• Wikiquote, a collection of quotations. (See Wikiquote for background)
• Wikisource, a collection of free source documents. (See Wikisource for background)
• Wikiversity, a collection of free learning tools

See also

• Wikibooks Portal for a list of Wikibooks in other languages.
• Help:Comparison of other Wiki projects for information on how to utilize Wikimedia's projects.
• Wikibooks:Mirrors and forks - list of pages that copy our content (not always legally)
• Wikibooks:Wikibooks in the media - for list of news articles that have mentioned Wikibooks.