This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Wikibooks is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
 |
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (August 2007) |
 |
|
| URL | www.wikibooks.org |
|---|---|
| Slogan | Think free. Learn free. |
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Textbooks wiki |
| Registration | Optional |
| Available language(s) | multilingual |
| Owner | Wikimedia Foundation |
| Created by | Jimmy Walescitation needed and the Wikimedia Community |
| Launched | July 10, 2003 |
| Alexa rank | 21321 |
Wikibooks (previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks) is a Wikimedia Foundation wiki for the creation of free content textbooks and annotated texts that anyone can edit.
Contents |
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 Wikibooks' 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
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 the GNU Free Documentation 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.
Similar projects
- Project Gutenberg
- MyMCAT - a not-for-profit site for students preparing for the MCAT
- wikiHow - a for-profit site with a collection of how-to guides
See also
- Digital library (or Virtual library)
- e-book
- Elibrary
- Global Text
- ibiblio
- Open Content Alliance
- Open hardware
- The European Library
- Universal library
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
References
- ^ Most popular in Germany, #589 wikibooks.org - Traffic Details from Alexa
- "All Systems Go: The Newly Emerging Infrastructure to Support Free Books". Ben Crowell. Retrieved on June 18, 2006.
|
|||||
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 2 December 2008, at 06:46.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Wikibooks".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.