Workshop Reminder — Publish Digital Books & Open Educational Resources with Pressbooks

UC Berkeley Open Book Publishing website with buttons to create a book or find a book

Date/Time: Tuesday, April 9, 2024, 11:00am–12:30pm
Location: Online. Register via LibCal and you’ll receive the Zoom link for the event.

If you’re looking to self-publish work of any length and want an easy-to-use tool that offers a high degree of customization, allows flexibility with publishing formats (EPUB, PDF), and provides web-hosting options, Pressbooks may be great for you. Pressbooks is often the tool of choice for academics creating digital books, open textbooks, and open educational resources, since you can license your materials for reuse however you desire. Learn why and how to use Pressbooks for publishing your original books or course materials. You’ll leave the workshop with a project already under way.

Curious about how UC Berkeley faculty, students, and staff have used Pressbooks? Check out some of the Berkeley-created digital books and resources below, or browse over 6,400 open access books on the Pressbooks Directory.


Workshop Reminder — Publish Digital Books & Open Educational Resources with Pressbooks

A presentation slide with dark red background, library logo, and text about the event that reads: "Public digital books and open educational resources with Pressbooks. Berkeley Library, Timothy Vollmer, Scholarly Communication + Copyright Librarian, Office of Scholarly Communication Services, September 20, 2023."

Date/Time: Wednesday, September 20, 2023, 11:00am–12:30pm
Location: Zoom only. Register via LibCal and you’ll receive the Zoom link for the event.

If you’re looking to self-publish work of any length and want an easy-to-use tool that offers a high degree of customization, allows flexibility with publishing formats (EPUB, PDF), and provides web-hosting options, Pressbooks may be great for you. Pressbooks is often the tool of choice for academics creating digital books, open textbooks, and open educational resources, since you can license your materials for reuse however you desire. Learn why and how to use Pressbooks for publishing your original books or course materials. You’ll leave the workshop with a project already under way.

Curious about how UC Berkeley faculty, students, and staff have used Pressbooks? Check out some of the Berkeley-created digital books and resources below, or browse over 5,700 open access books on the Pressbooks Directory.

Six book covers from Pressbooks created by UC Berkeley faculty, students, and staff.


Upcoming Workshop: Publish Digital Books and Open Educational Resources with Pressbooks

computer keyboard and mouse with title of the Digital publishing Workshop Series

Workshop Date/Time: Wednesday, February 8, 2023, 11:00am–12:30pm

Register to receive Zoom link

If you’re looking to self-publish work of any length and want an easy-to-use tool that offers a high degree of customization, allows flexibility with publishing formats (EPUB, PDF), and provides web-hosting options, Pressbooks may be great for you. Pressbooks is often the tool of choice for academics creating digital books, open textbooks, and open educational resources, since you can license your materials for reuse however you desire. Learn why and how to use Pressbooks for publishing your original books or course materials. You’ll leave the workshop with a project already under way! Signup at the link above and the Zoom login details will be emailed to you.

Please sign up today and join us online on February 8.


Primary Sources: Biblioteca Digital Mexicana

The Biblioteca Digital Mexicana is a multi-institutional initiative to create a digital collection of historical documents from Mexico from 500 A.D. to 1949. The documents range from pre-hispanic codices such as the Mixtec Codice Colombino from the 12th century, to the original manuscript of the Plan de Ayala written in 1911 by Emiliano Zapata and Otilio Montano, one of the most important documents of the Mexican Revolution.


Primary Sources: Los Primeros Libros de las Americas

Logo for Primeros Libros de las Americas As the site explains, Los Primeros Libros de las Americas is “a digital collection of the first books printed in the Americas before 1601. These monographs are very important because they represent the first printing in the New World and provide primary sources for scholarly studies in a variety of academic fields. Of the 220 editions believed to have been produced in Mexico and 20 in Peru, approximately 155 are represented in institutions around the world.”


Workshop: Publish Digital Books & Open Educational Resources with Pressbooks

Digital Publishing Workshop Series

Publish Digital Books & Open Educational Resources with Pressbooks
Tuesday, February 20th, 1:10-2:30pm
Academic Innovation Studio, Dwinelle Hall 117 (Level D)

If you’re looking to self-publish work of any length and want an easy-to-use tool that offers a high degree of customization, allows flexibility with publishing formats (EPUB, MOBI, PDF), and provides web-hosting options, Pressbooks may be great for you. Pressbooks is often the tool of choice for academics creating digital books, open textbooks, and open educational resources, since you can license your materials for reuse however you desire. Learn why and how to use Pressbooks for publishing your original books or course materials. You’ll leave the workshop with a project already under way! Register at bit.ly/dp-berk

Upcoming Workshops in this Series 2017-2018:

  • Scalar for Multimedia Digital Projects
  • Copyright and Fair Use for Digital Projects
  • Omeka for Digital Collections and Exhibits
  • By Design: Graphics & Images Basics
  • The Long Haul: Best Practices for Making Your Digital Project Last

Please see bit.ly/dp-berk for details.


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New Workshop: DIY Digital Publishing with Pressbooks

Person holding an open hardcover book in front of face

Publish Digital Books and Open Textbooks with Pressbooks

Tuesday, Feb. 20, 1:10 – 2:30 p.m. | Academic Innovation Studio, Dwinelle Hall 117 (Level D)

Register http://bit.ly/0220pressbooks

The workshop is open to all students, faculty, and staff. Feel free to come with a project idea in mind, and please bring a laptop if possible.


On February 20, the Office of Scholarly Communication Services is offering a hands-on workshop to introduce students, faculty, and staff to Pressbooks, a free, easy, and elegant self-publishing platform that anyone can use to create a digital book (or any other online resource) in minutes. This workshop is offered as part of the Library’s ongoing efforts to support and promote the creation and use of open and affordable course materials on campus (read more about our course affordability pilot programs, events, and workshops).

Do you have material you’ve been wanting to publish online, but aren’t sure how to get started or what tool to use? Come to our workshop to see Pressbooks in action and start working on your own project. By the end of the workshop, you can have a beautiful book published online! Working on a non-book project? You can also use Pressbooks to publish a chapter, white paper, toolkit, or other online resource.

Pressbooks is simple to use and infinitely flexible for a variety of projects, from creating a course textbook to publishing your own chapter- or module-length work. Quickly becoming the preferred tool for educators and writers publishing open books and other content, Pressbooks offers numerous features to support open access and accessibility.

Here are some highlights of what we like about Pressbooks and why we think the platform will be an exciting tool for students, faculty, and staff working on digital projects:

  • Easy to use. No design or developer skills required. If you’ve ever used WordPress, you’ll feel right at home.
  • Professional design. Choose from dozens of templates and themes that create professional-looking and customizable digital books.
  • Immediate and continuous publishing. Publish in minutes, and make changes or edits easily as you go.
  • Flexible licensing. License your work with any number of Creative Commons options. You can use the same license for the whole work or apply different licenses for different chapters or sections.
  • Accessibility. Pressbooks features and outputs are designed to support accessibility. Pressbooks is committed to making its code and user interface comply with WCAG 2.0 (level AA) standards within 2018, and it is developing tools to help authors maximize the accessibility of published work.
  • Collaboration. Give a co-author access to your project, and use Hypothes.is to add or enable annotations.
  • Free! Anyone can create an account at no charge.

Come to the workshop on February 20 to try out this innovative platform and kickstart your digital project. In the meantime, if you’re curious about what Pressbooks publications look like, or what else the platform can do, check out how other institutions are using Pressbooks, browse the book examples created at eCampusOntario, and see an open module recently published at UC Berkeley. The Library will also soon have a campus portal just for UC Berkeley-affiliated books, where you can showcase your work and view others’ projects.

For more information, email schol-comm@berkeley.edu.