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