English Wikibooks is an open-content library written entirely by volunteers. Started in 2003, Wikibooks has the mission of creating a collection of open-content textbooks and instructional guides for students and learners of all ages. Currently, the project has over 116,000 content modules in approximately 3,000 textbooks, study guides and annotated texts. 155,000 registered users have made over one million edits. Related books are arranged into subject pages, including: Languages, Mathematics, Humanities, Social sciences, Fine Arts, Computing, Science, and Engineering. Wikibooks works closely with other WMF projects, such as Wikisource, Wikiversity, and Wikipedia to produce comprehensive textbook resources for students and educators. Many books on Wikibooks are available for download in HTML or PDF formats, and PDF and OpenOffice format ready-to-print files are available on-demand. Users can also purchase print-on-demand versions from PediaPress.
Wikibooks is also the home to English Wikijunior, a project to write educational books for children from birth until the age of 12. Started in 2004, Wikijunior volunteers have written over a dozen books for young children in subjects such as science, language, and history.
Wikibooks has attracted substantial attention from other organizations. These include:
- United Nations Development Programme/Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme - donated twenty-four ebooks to Wikibooks in 2006.
- Free High School Science Texts - development of these textbooks have been transfered to Wikibooks.
- California Open Source Textbook Project - textbook content is developed on Wikibooks.
- Blender Foundation - a basic tutorial on how to use the open source software is hosted on Wikibooks and prominently referenced from this website.
Several private authors and teachers have also donated entire books or large portions of books to Wikibooks. Wikibooks has also been used for several collaborative group projects, many of which are related to school or university classes.
Subscribed users: 77,000
Number of languages: 120