The Rebus Foundation has launched its first project, The Rebus Community for Open Textbook Creation.
The Rebus Community will build a new, collaborative model for open textbook publishing.
Its mission is to publish many new, high-quality CC-BY-licensed open textbooks that can be freely used and remixed by educators worldwide. In addition, the community will provide support for university administrators launching open textbook publishing programs and faculty wanting to publish open textbooks.
The Rebus Community will:
- Build a global, connected network of Open Textbook creators;
- Develop an Open Textbook publishing process in response to the needs of this community; and
- Develop software and tools to support the processes of publishing Open Textbooks.
“There are many processes that go into creating an open textbook, and the Rebus Community will figure out what open textbook creators need and how to crowdsource those activities in the open education context,” said co-founder Hugh McGuire, who previously founded book-related ventures including Librivox, a mass web collaboration project that produced the world’s largest collection of public domain audiobooks.
Anyone interested in making open textbooks or contributing to open textbook development and adoption can join the Rebus Community at https://forum.rebus.community. Rebus Community members making CC BY-licensed open textbooks can also get access to the Rebus Community Press, a software platform for formatting open textbooks powered by Pressbooks.
For more information about the Rebus Community, visit About.Rebus.Community.
The Rebus Community is a project of The Rebus Foundation, a Canadian not-for-profit organization with a mission to build new models and technology for open book publishing and reading on the web. The foundation was created in August and is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, leaders in supporting Open Education initiatives.