
Wikibooks (previously called ''Wikimedia Free Textbook Project'' and ''Wikimedia-Textbooks'') is a
wiki-based
Wikimedia project hosted by the
Wikimedia Foundation for the creation of
free content digital textbook A digital textbook is a digital book or e-book intended to serve as the text for a class. Digital textbooks may also be known as e-textbooks or e-texts. Digital textbooks are a major component of technology-based education reform. They may serve as ...
s and annotated texts that anyone can edit.
Initially, the project was created solely in English in July 2003; a later expansion to include additional
languages was started in July 2004.
As of , there are Wikibooks sites active for languages
[ Wikimedia's MediaWiki API:Sitematrix. Retrieved from Data:Wikipedia statistics/meta.tab] comprising a total of articles and recently active editors.
[ Wikimedia's MediaWiki API:Siteinfo. Retrieved from Data:Wikipedia statistics/data.tab]
History
The wikibooks.org domain was registered on . It was launched to host and build free textbooks on subjects such as
organic chemistry and
physics, in response to a request by Wikipedia contributor Karl Wick. Two major sub-projects, Wikijunior and
Wikiversity, were created within Wikibooks before its official policy was later changed so that future incubator-type projects are started according to the Wikimedia Foundation's new project policy.
In August 2006, Wikiversity be