Canadians are playing key role in `Books 2.0' by Michael Geist, Toronto Star (Feb 25)
Books 2.0 refers to new models for book publishing that involve collaborative tools on the Web. Michael Geist presents the example of Montreal-based Wikitravel where travellers post comments about places and their travel experiences.
"In less than five years, the site has accumulated more than 30,000 online travel guides in 18 languages, with more than 10,000 editorial contributions each week. The content is freely available under a Creative Commons licence that allows the public to use, copy or edit the guides."
Out of this grew Wikitravel Press - books based on the online content but available for a price in print; updated monthly with new contributions and edits; and uses "print-on-demand technology supplied by Lulu.com".
LibriVox (librivox.org) is another example, also in Montreal - an audio-book project - "LibriVox volunteers create voice recordings of chapters of books that are in the public domain. The resulting audio files are posted back on to the Internet for free." Now has 1,200 books in audio.
Posted by Gwen at February 28, 2008 11:10 AM