Bookshelf Project/Scribus success story

The Wikipedia Bookshelf Project is creating a core set of public outreach materials designed to help new contributors understand the specific culture of Wikipedia, the free, online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The materials aim to increase new contributor awareness and interest, foster excitement about contributing to Wikipedia, and provide key training tools. The materials are being developed in English; however, they are to be designed for easy translation, localization, and customization by volunteers, local chapters, and educational institutions such as schools and universities. Bookshelf materials are being developed by the project team from the Wikimedia Foundation (the Foundation that oversees the development of Wikipedia), community volunteers, and production experts.

The combination of these requirements naturally led the project team to choose Scribus to create these materials. Scribus fits perfectly with the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation, and allows anyone to easily access the tools needed to contribute to the project. The resulting materials are also published under a free license (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike, except for the Wikipedia and Wikimedia logos).

The material produced so far can be found at http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bookshelf (note that the last two documents in the list of printed material were not created with Scribus; in particular, the project is currently looking for a volunteer who could convert the document Video for Wikipedia and the Open Web: A Guide to Best Practices for Cultural and Educational Institutions, originally created using Adobe InDesign, in Scribus format).

Some of the Scribus files are already available at http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Localization_guidelines_(Bookshelf), in particular for the Welcome to Wikipedia booklet (PDF, ZIP files with Scribus source).