Title: Create a hardcopy book from Wikipedia articles
Course: FLO MicroCourse: Exploring a World of Open in the WikiVerse OER > Section: Tips and Resources

Have you ever curated a collection of Wikipedia articles for a course, or perhaps for your own personal use? Did you know you can create a pretty classy looking book from your collection?

Wikipedia & its sister projects include a tool called the Book Creator. At times, you can see the option to "Create a book" listed in the Print section of the left column in Wikipedia, but even if the Book Creator doesn't appear there (the tool is sometimes buggy & the hope is that it will be replaced), it does still exist. To give it a try, log in to Wikipedia & navigate to the following address: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Book&bookcmd=book_creator

The very first thing you'll see on this page (as of summer 2020) is that you won't be able to save a curated collection of articles as a PDF. This means, unfortunately, that you can't use this tool to create your own PDF e-book. However, you can create a standard paper-based book.

As you read further, you'll see some very basic information on how to work with the Book Creator tool. Click on the ‘Start Book Creator’ button when you’re ready. The Pedia Press website provides a little more information & a short video to explain the process, but the basic process is this: You navigate to the various articles you want to include & then choose (from the menu which will appear) to "add this page to your book." At any point, you can view your book & get a feel for how it's coming together. It's pretty straightforward.

Pedia Press lets you preview your book in detail before committing to having it printed. It also provides you with a number of options. You can:

- choose a title & subtitle
- change the order of chapters
- select pages printed in colour or B&W
- choose a hard- or soft cover book
- change the colour & image for the cover
- choose pages to be configured with one- or two columns

Although it appears that you can choose a book in either an A4 or (US) letter size, all printed books are 5.5" x 8.5". The price varies depending on the features you choose & the number of pages: the cheapest possible option is somewhere around $10 CAN.