Creating your own books from wikis
Jinfo Blog

27th February 2009

By Penny Crossland

Item

Internet product blog TechCrunch (http://digbig.com/4yhwg) alerted us today to an interesting facility made available by Wikipedia. A partnership between the Wikimedia Foundation (http://wikimediafoundation.org) and Pediapress (http://www.pediapress.com) a German open source software development company has enabled German-speaking Wikipedia users to create customized books from wiki content since 2007. Last week, (http://digbig.com/4yhwh ) the wiki-to-print feature was made available in six additional languages: French, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese and simple English (for children and adults learning English). Yesterday, the regular English Wikipedia site added the book printing functionality for logged-on users. (a temporary measure) Customised books can be put together with table of contents or category lists and are free if downloaded as PDF files, but a charge is made by Pediapress for printing downloaded material in book format. Costs depend on number of pages and where customers are based – shipping costs are extra. The Wikipedia Special Book page, which allows you to create and manage wiki pages, is available at this site: http://digbig.com/4yhwj . The Wikimedia Foundation has hailed the wiki-to print feature as’ of strategic importance to the cause of free education worldwide’, while PediaPress emphasizes the feature’s value in supplying specialized reference books, affordable textbooks and content in unpopular languages. This is all very laudable, but Wikipedia’s critics have always pointed to the unreliability of the data. Free education is not worth much, if data is inaccurate. Also, the very nature of Wikipedia, i.e. allowing anybody to edit and update content, makes the printing of wiki pages questionable. Is it cost effective to print a wiki book, if somebody updates the content the next day? Erik Moeller of the Wikimedia Foundation thinks the wiki-to print feature will affect how people write on Wikipedia, will improve content and encourage new writers to participate. To view a sample wiki book, look at this one on Amphibian aircraft: http://pediapress.com/resources/images/samplebook/samplebook.pdf

« Blog