Wikipedia hard-cover editions now available

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This week our friends over at Pediapress announced that custom-printable books containing Wikipedia articles are now also being offered in attractive hard cover, bound editions – and in color. Previously customers could order softcover editions of books containing a customizable list of Wikipedia articles in any configuration. The new hardcover editions even contain a silk bookmark and stitched bindings.
The Pediapress MediaWiki extension on Wikipedia allows users to collect any number of articles or categories into a single PDF file or OpenOffice text file, which can then be downloaded for off-line viewing or local printing, or through Pediapress’ on-demand printing technologies the document can be turned into a bound book and shipped right to you. To start creating a book, look for the Create a book link under Print/Export on the lefthand Wikipedia menu. Some incredibly unique and inspired Wikipedia books have been created since Pediapress kicked off.
Now is your chance to get your very favorite lists of Wikipedia articles bound in a bookshelf-friendly format. Offline versions of Wikipedia are an important part of the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission to spread free knowledge to everyone on the planet, so we’re happy to see the options and quality of this format expand.
Jay Walsh, Head of Communications

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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#2629

Something can’t be “incredibly unique.” That doesn’t make any sense.
Is there a specific reason PediaPress gets such love from the Wikimedia Foundation? You’ve already enabled a hastily written extension and put a prominent link to it in the sidebar. (The “featured product” is a glorified version of hitting the print button.) Isn’t that enough?
There are plenty of companies looking to bite into the “Wikimedia apple.” Why did PediaPress get through? Why is it necessary to shill for their garbage on the Wikimedia blog?

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#2630

“Offline versions of Wikipedia are an important part of the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission to spread free knowledge to everyone on the planet, so we’re happy to see the options and quality of this format expand.”
How is the port from a free, open format (the web) to a localized and costly one (a book) in the spirit of ‘spreading free knowledge’?
“on-demand printing technologies”.
The future is now – we can apply ink to paper!
This post should be in the Wikipedia article for ‘oversell’

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#2631

The technology does not necessitate creating or purchasing a book, Lebowski. Pediapress allows users to create their own collections of PDF or OpenOffice files and download, reuse, share – you name it. This can provide a valuable method of providing offline copies of Wikipedia articles in a large number of languages. There is no requirement to purchase the finished product – the offering of a printed and bound book is simply an option to the user.

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#2632

A bit more background here:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-November/062308.html

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#2633

I just tried it and it is awesome. Though all the critics i find it really cheap, It is $9 for 100 pages! And plus, you can download the pdf and print it anywhere you like. Great work, thanks..

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#2634

Well, i think its a great idea!
hate to say it but the internet will not be around forever, and to print the whole thing would be quite expensive.
wiki is the one place i go to find out more about anything, and consider it a blessing.
please say your selling this on amazon eventually, or even the waterstones bookshop… 🙂
best regards

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#2635

Sounds like a great service to me, wouldn’t have known about it if I hadn’t stumbled on this page either.

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#2636

I think it’s silly to hate on this product development. MzMcBride sounds as though s/he has bad apples over the specific publishing house chosen [or created?], and Lebowski just sounds like like an 31337157 [elitist]. There probably IS a reason PediPress gets such love from Wikimedia…maybe along the lines of, oh, I don’t know, having a similar informational philosophy, or something like that? Maybe being a spinoff from Brainbot specifically for this purpose may be significant? Just shooting in the dark here. Let’s not forget that the internet isn’t ACTUALLY free, and it isn’t as ubiquitous as we may believe.… Read more »

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#2637

I believe this defeats the purpose of Wikipedia. I understand the site to be an ever-changing pool of knowledge, much like a library in which you may, as a member, sit down and write a book to leave on one of the shelves. We could have 500,000 copies printed on, say, 20th century novelists and find out firstly, there are CITATIONS NEEDED (shock horror), and secondly realise that a controversy similar to that surrounding the literary canon is formed. This is not a useful tool, especially considering you can print wiki pages already. A similar tool ought to be introduced… Read more »

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#2638

@Lebowski – You obviously have no respect for publishing or the printed word. No one is holding a gun to your head to buy this. Why would you intentionally bash an optional service? By your logic, why even bother with dictionaries or cook books, or even instruction manuals? Why have paper at all? What were us foolish people thinking?

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#2639

“(H)ate to say it but the internet will not be around forever.” The day the internet goes away will likely be the same as does humanity. Therefor, having a nice hard copy of Wikipedia would be equally as useless.

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#2640

@SKyle
Dude, you are totally interpreting this wrong… I think what they meant is that internet sources are unreliable since they can change, but books won’t. This is why wiki is never considered a good source of information when you are doing research since the articles could be changed pretty easily.

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#2641

I’m not sure why this is catching so much flak. I took this to be a service provided to people who might want to make a cool personal “encyclopedia” of something important to them. I was thinking about getting one of a bunch of physics articles for my brother for Christmas. I don’t think theres much more to it than that. No need for sensationalism.

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#2642

@DanzaBarr
Did you even read the article?
“The Pediapress MediaWiki extension on Wikipedia allows users to collect any number of articles or categories into a single PDF file or OpenOffice text file, which can then be downloaded for off-line viewing or local printing…”

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#2643

@any”31337157s”anywhere
I believe this to be a great OPTION for anyone who wishes to have “a cool personal “encyclopedia” of something important to them” . I myself, having also just stumbled onto this option, am now going to make a custom and personalized encyclopedia for Music Theory and another for Physics. Thanks Wiki!
Now let’s all get back to collecting and summing up all the knowledge we possibly can.
– Go N3RDS!! –

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