Wikimedia in general can now produce e-books in EPUB format on demand. However, Wikisource was actually there first and is ahead of the pack in this area.
Wikimedia projects, such as Wikisource’s sister project Wikipedia, use the “book tool” to collect pages into books. These can be printed and bound as print books via PediaPress, as well as produced into electronic format. Initially PDF was the main format and recently EPUB has been added. A problem from the point of view of Wikisource is that this tool does not take into account it’s specific qualities; it was built for Wikipedia and ignores the other projects. For example, it adds a licence in the back matter of its output that claims a Creative Commons licence. This is entirely accurate for many projects but amounts to copyfraud when applied to Wikisource’s public domain works.
Anyway, there is an alternative. France is the technological home of Wikisource. Hebrew was the first language-specific Wikisource and English is currently the largest but the technology on which Wikisource runs always seems to emanate from French Wikisource. In this case, the tool WS Export was originally developed by French wikisourcers for French Wikisource and works for all language domains. It supported EPUB before the book tool and looks likely to support Mobipocket first too. More importantly, the tool and its output works better with Wikisource and attends to Wikisource’s quirks.
In November 2012, 3,700 EPUB works were produced by this tool. Not surprisingly, French Wikisource produced the most (1,176), followed by Italian Wikisource (1,049) and English Wikisource (674). Other EPUBs ranged from Breton (br) to Farsi (fa) to Venetian (vec).
Jan 24, 2013 @ 10:30:35
My biggest issue with Wikisource is that the finished products cannot be readily found by the READING public. Wikisource is about working on sources and once that is done, there is no follow up to get it read … I blog regularly about Wikisource at http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com why not compare notes ? GerardM
Feb 05, 2013 @ 23:58:15
It is a problem and there are lots of different ideas about solving it. I’ve thought about some relatively solutions on Wikisource itself and I think you’ve suggested bigger projects in the past (I have read your blog; and linked to it on the Links page). At the very least, I might blog about it in the future.
Feb 06, 2013 @ 08:58:23
Did you know that the ml.wikisource has its finished products on a separate website that is WAY more popular than Wikisource.. That they produce cd-s with books as content…
Really it is all about presentation and I read several languages. Also there are many freely licensed products from different projects, they are also not read and people pay as a consequence Amazon.. Nothing wrong with that (people are reading) but Amazon is stealing our lunch.
My question to you.. are you interested in getting a solution that makes the finished products visible ?
Thanks,
GerardM
Feb 06, 2013 @ 22:52:13
No, I didn’t know about the ml.wikisource site, although I did know about the CDs.
I am interested in the idea of a solution. I would certainly like such a solution to exist. On a personal level, I’m not sure if I could provide much beyond vocal support; I don’t think I would be much practical help. After browsing your archives, would this be the “wikipublish” concept?
Mar 04, 2013 @ 18:58:38
It would be the Wikipublish concept.. Most people are interested in a result and from the result, the fact that you can trace back to the original book through a scan you provide something that is really powerful. That is the Wikisource angle.
Providing freely licensed and PD material is something we otherwise have to pay for..
Thanks,
Gerard