The Associated Press is reporting that Bertelsmann AG plans to print “The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedias” using the Germany version of the popular online encyclopedia:
The media company — whose units include publisher Random House Inc. and music venture Sony BMG — said Wednesday that it plans to publish "The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia" starting in September with the content made up of 50,000 of the most-searched terms on the German language edition of Wikipedia.
The company says the printed version will bring Wikipedia to a new audience. Copies will be sold for $31.80 with 1.59 going back to the WikiPedia project.
Bertelsmann will use 50,000 of the most-searched terms to populate the 992-page book.
It will be interesting to see how many books they sell. I have a hard time seeing a market for a mass produced copy of encyclopedia. But I think this only the first step in taking reference content from the Web and turning it into print. I imagine step two utilizing a shopping cart-like process to enable Wikipedia visitors to compile custom Wikipedia encyclopedias (I have written about this before, and there is active research at RIT exploring “Wiki-to-print”).
Discussion
By Joseph J. Pasky on Apr 24, 2008
...which reminds me of the joke I heard recently. A 'computer age' college student comes into his professor's office and is fascinated by his collection of books...especially the 24 nearly identical volumes that took most of one shelf. "Wow", the student exclaims, " WHAT is THAT?!". A bit puzzled the professor responds, "That's an encyclopedia".
"Really?" says the student in disbelief, "You mean they printed-out the whole thing!?".
By Michael Josefowicz on Apr 24, 2008
I agree with Adam about where this is going to go: Choosing sections of wikipedia to output in print.
Consider what this might mean for textbooks. A teacher goes to a website, finds the small section that is appropriate for next week's curriculum, she orders and prints 30 copies customized for their class, their time and their strategy.
Then consider other applications in education for the same kind of process.
Discussion
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