I received an email this morning from Frederick Noronha, one of the contacts at the UNDP who helped to oversee the UNDP-APDIP book donations. He is so pleased with the way the donations went, and how well the situation is working out for them, that he is trying to set us up with other NGOs who have books that would be ripe for donationg to Wikibooks.
Currently, he is trying to arrange donations from APC.org:
http://www.apc.org http://www.apc.org/books/index.shtml
of their ebooks to Wikibooks. Looking through the list, I think this donation might only contain a few books (most other listed publications are not books at all), but it's a demonstration that we are starting to get some serious recognition from some cool groups.
Below is the email that he sent to me this morning. I have already replied with some answers to the easy questions. I have removed email addresses and other contact information from this email because I dont know if these people want that information archived on the mailing list. I would be happy to provide that contact information to anybody who was interested in getting in touch with this group, and helping with this project.
One question that I could not answer is the attitude towards book donations of this caliber of the other Wikibooks language projects, specifically FR and ES. I assume, blindly, that these projects would accept such donations and possibly assist with the upload effort. However, I like to find out for certain. Do we have any fluent French and Spanish speakers who would be willing to ask about this issue on the respective projects?
Also, it seems that the books to be donated are in PDF format. Does there exist a GOOD conversion utility from PDF to wiki format? Barring that, is there a good conversion utility from PDF to DOC, DOCBOOK, or ODT format (because openoffice can export from these types to MediaWiki)? If not, we will need to do the formatting and uploading manually, which isn't going to be pleasant. Maybe we could ask the guys at Wikisource if they had any good utilities for this task.
--Andrew Whitworth
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:00:49 +0530 Subject: Re: APC IR handbook: getting on wikibooks Dear Andrew,
We're making progress on this, and it would be really nice to get APC.org's books up on Wikibooks. My personal view is that such actions could trigger off a wider trend among NGOs (and others) who realise the relevance of such a process.
Below is Karen Higgs's post, which is self-explanatory. Could you kindly let me know if this would meet the needs of Wikibooks? Let's try and best see how we can meet one another's specific requirements in a way that both sides feel that we've done something positive at the end of the day. Thanks! FN
On 21/02/2008, Karen Higgs wrote:
dear fn
how are you doing?
i'm very happy to tell you that i had a long chat with Andrew Rens, an IP/open content lawyer while i was in South Africa to unravel the situation with our publications and sharing on wikibooks.
He advised us that there is NO problem whatsoever with us applying multiple licences to any publication.
We "apply" the licences by adding them to the appropriate section of our website where the books are located.
So we can now get moving!
I would like you to work with Kelly, our intern, on this. She will ensure that the necessary licensing information is added to the APC site.
Can wikibooks use the information in pdf format? That is what we have.
The pdfs have the following licensing information: EN - "copyleft" 2003 ES - creative commons attribution-non commercial 2.0 2005 FR - creative commons attribution-non commercial 2.5 2003
What text do you propose we add to the website bestowing the FDL that wikibooks wants? That reference is what wikibooks can point to as the relevant licensing.
Do they want the three language versions - EN, FR and ES? That is what we would like to give them.
Btw, Kelly is on leave now until next week.
All the best and thanks for keeping this going Kah
I'll be happy to ask on fr :-)
Ant
Andrew Whitworth wrote:
I received an email this morning from Frederick Noronha, one of the contacts at the UNDP who helped to oversee the UNDP-APDIP book donations. He is so pleased with the way the donations went, and how well the situation is working out for them, that he is trying to set us up with other NGOs who have books that would be ripe for donationg to Wikibooks.
Currently, he is trying to arrange donations from APC.org:
http://www.apc.org http://www.apc.org/books/index.shtml
of their ebooks to Wikibooks. Looking through the list, I think this donation might only contain a few books (most other listed publications are not books at all), but it's a demonstration that we are starting to get some serious recognition from some cool groups.
Below is the email that he sent to me this morning. I have already replied with some answers to the easy questions. I have removed email addresses and other contact information from this email because I dont know if these people want that information archived on the mailing list. I would be happy to provide that contact information to anybody who was interested in getting in touch with this group, and helping with this project.
One question that I could not answer is the attitude towards book donations of this caliber of the other Wikibooks language projects, specifically FR and ES. I assume, blindly, that these projects would accept such donations and possibly assist with the upload effort. However, I like to find out for certain. Do we have any fluent French and Spanish speakers who would be willing to ask about this issue on the respective projects?
Also, it seems that the books to be donated are in PDF format. Does there exist a GOOD conversion utility from PDF to wiki format? Barring that, is there a good conversion utility from PDF to DOC, DOCBOOK, or ODT format (because openoffice can export from these types to MediaWiki)? If not, we will need to do the formatting and uploading manually, which isn't going to be pleasant. Maybe we could ask the guys at Wikisource if they had any good utilities for this task.
--Andrew Whitworth
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:00:49 +0530 Subject: Re: APC IR handbook: getting on wikibooks Dear Andrew,
We're making progress on this, and it would be really nice to get APC.org's books up on Wikibooks. My personal view is that such actions could trigger off a wider trend among NGOs (and others) who realise the relevance of such a process.
Below is Karen Higgs's post, which is self-explanatory. Could you kindly let me know if this would meet the needs of Wikibooks? Let's try and best see how we can meet one another's specific requirements in a way that both sides feel that we've done something positive at the end of the day. Thanks! FN
On 21/02/2008, Karen Higgs wrote:
dear fn
how are you doing?
i'm very happy to tell you that i had a long chat with Andrew Rens, an IP/open content lawyer while i was in South Africa to unravel the situation with our publications and sharing on wikibooks.
He advised us that there is NO problem whatsoever with us applying multiple licences to any publication.
We "apply" the licences by adding them to the appropriate section of our website where the books are located.
So we can now get moving!
I would like you to work with Kelly, our intern, on this. She will ensure that the necessary licensing information is added to the APC site.
Can wikibooks use the information in pdf format? That is what we have.
The pdfs have the following licensing information: EN - "copyleft" 2003 ES - creative commons attribution-non commercial 2.0 2005 FR - creative commons attribution-non commercial 2.5 2003
What text do you propose we add to the website bestowing the FDL that wikibooks wants? That reference is what wikibooks can point to as the relevant licensing.
Do they want the three language versions - EN, FR and ES? That is what we would like to give them.
Btw, Kelly is on leave now until next week.
All the best and thanks for keeping this going Kah
textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org