Open-Source Publishing Of Textbooks For Educational Purposes: Wikibooks

Open-source textbooks on any topic, in any language, available to anyone, anywhere, for free - this is the goal of Wikibooks, a project of the Wikimedia Project, the folks who brought you Wikipedia. Currently consisting of over 11.000 book modules from kindergarten to university-level, Wikibooks opens the door to publishing textbooks in the same way Wikipedia allowed anyone to define and redefine a word allowing real worldwide, open-ended discourse to enter into the academic arena. This could equal negative implications for the publishing industry if instructors begin selecting Wikibooks as texts for classes, a viable option considering the rising costs of published academic texts. But if the project continues to grow it could also positively impact global education, as...