WikiBooks make news
Karen mentions Wikibooks in a comment on the Jimmy Wales visit below. And I just started receiving more news about the project. The latest is a summary from EduPage, an email list from EduCause which I added here with a link to the ZDNet article that was their source. While both read more like press releases there is some meat there and some questions raised. Would you choose to learn from a wikibook instead of a book from a trusted publisher? (is only one of the questions that I would ask).
WIKIBOOKS ENTERS TEXTBOOK PUBLISHING FIELD
The Wikimedia Foundation launched the Wikibooks project to create a kindergarten-to-college curriculum of textbooks based on an open source development model. Material written for the new texts can be short or long and easily modified, and the resulting Wikibooks would be freely licensed. The goal is to produce thousands of books and smaller entries on a range of topics by employing a worldwide community of writers and editors. Any reader or student could create a personalized book or edit an existing title. Wikibooks currently contains more than 11,000 submissions from volunteers (professionals in many fields, college and graduate students, and professors). The project is still in the early stages and faces competitors such as Google’s digital library project, which has run into copyright issues.
ZDNet, 28 September 2005
