Wikibooks
 | |
Screenshot  Screenshot of wikibooks.org home page | |
Type of site | Textbooks wiki |
|---|---|
| Available in | Multilingual (76 active)[1] |
| Owner | Wikimedia Foundation |
| Created by | User Karl Wick and the Wikimedia Community |
| URL | www |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | July 10, 2003 |
| Current status | Active |
Wikibooks (previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks) is a wiki-based Wikimedia project hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation for the creation of free content digital textbooks and annotated texts that anyone can edit.
Initially, the project was created solely in English in July 2003; a later expansion to include additional languages was started in July 2004.[2] As of October 2021, there are Wikibooks sites active for 76 languages[1] comprising a total of 306,969 articles and 1,300 recently active editors.[3]
History[edit]
The wikibooks.org domain was registered on July 19, 2003.[4] It was launched 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.[5]
Since 2008, Wikibooks is included in BASE.[6]
In June 2016, Compete.com estimated that Wikibooks had 1,478,812 unique visitors.[7]
Since 2021, video game strategy guides are accepted again after being excluded in 2007.[8]
Wikijunior[edit]
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, Spanish, and Arabic. It is funded by a grant from the Beck Foundation.
Book content[edit]
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 released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license (or a compatible license). This means that, as with its sister project, Wikipedia, contributions remain copyrighted to their creators, while the licensing ensures that it can be freely distributed and reused subject to certain conditions.
Wikibooks differs from Wikisource in that Wikisource collects exact copies and original translations of existing free content works, such as the original text of Shakespearean plays, while Wikibooks is dedicated either to original works, significantly altered versions of existing works, or annotations to original works.
The project is working towards completion of textbooks on numerous subjects, which founders hope will be followed by mainstream adoption and use of textbooks developed and housed there.
Multilingual statistics[edit]
As of October 2021, there are Wikibooks sites for 120 languages of which 76 are active and 44 are closed.[1] The active sites have 306,969 articles and the closed sites have 671 articles.[3] There are 4,448,751 registered users of which 1,300 are recently active.[3]
The top ten Wikibooks language projects by mainspace article count:[3]
| № | Language | Wiki | Good | Total | Edits | Admins | Users | Active users | Files |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | en | 93,446 | 275,103 | 3,949,559 | 10 | 3,356,644 | 440 | 2,712 |
| 2 | Hungarian | hu | 33,515 | 83,876 | 404,900 | 3 | 12,405 | 13 | 20,938 |
| 3 | German | de | 30,030 | 75,190 | 970,869 | 8 | 103,457 | 116 | 7,692 |
| 4 | French | fr | 17,684 | 54,339 | 664,121 | 7 | 106,373 | 36 | 167 |
| 5 | Italian | it | 15,030 | 34,344 | 416,335 | 4 | 45,431 | 40 | 766 |
| 6 | Portuguese | pt | 13,189 | 79,171 | 474,038 | 4 | 61,830 | 32 | 1,031 |
| 7 | Japanese | ja | 12,658 | 23,819 | 184,871 | 4 | 64,345 | 67 | 377 |
| 8 | Vietnamese | vi | 9,704 | 20,795 | 335,253 | 3 | 15,620 | 16 | 969 |
| 9 | Spanish | es | 9,093 | 37,655 | 398,855 | 11 | 116,048 | 59 | 0 |
| 10 | Dutch | nl | 8,500 | 27,844 | 350,578 | 10 | 25,452 | 16 | 17 |
For a complete list with totals, see Wikimedia Statistics.[9]
See also[edit]
- WikiToLearn
- CK-12 Foundation
- Digital library
- European Library
- Free High School Science Texts
- Global Text
- ibiblio
- LibriVox, an online digital library of free public domain audiobooks.
- Open Content Alliance
- Open textbook
- Project Gutenberg
- Universal library
- Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks?
References[edit]
- ^ a b c Wikimedia's MediaWiki API:Sitematrix. Retrieved October 2021 from Data:Wikipedia statistics/meta.tab
- ^ "Wikibooks Statistics - Article count (official)". Wikimedia. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
- ^ a b c d Wikimedia's MediaWiki API:Siteinfo. Retrieved October 2021 from Data:Wikipedia statistics/data.tab
- ^ "Wikibooks.org Whois Record". DomainTools, LLC. Retrieved 22 January 2013.
- ^ "Wikipedia, now serving K-12 and over". mentalfloss.com. 2006-08-04. Retrieved 2019-09-28.
- ^ Suchmaschine BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine): Wikibooks: Viquillibres : Portada. www.base-search.net. Retrieved 15 January 2018.
- ^ "Site Profile for wikibooks.org" Archived 2010-06-08 at the Wayback Machine, compete, retrieved July 19, 2016
- ^ "Wikibooks:Strategy guides - Wikibooks, open books for an open world".
- ^ "Wikibooks Statistics". Meta.Wikimedia.org. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
Further reading[edit]
- Ben Crowell (2005). "All Systems Go: The Newly Emerging Infrastructure to Support Free Books". Retrieved June 18, 2006.
- Michael F. Shaughnessy (2009-07-14). "An Interview with Curtis Bonk: A Look at Wikibooks and Wikibookians". EducationNews.org.
External links[edit]
- English Wikibooks' Main Page
- Wikijunior 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
