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CTOL: Pressbooks

 CENTER FOR TEACHING & ONLINE LEARNING

Location

Building 22, Room 181

Hours

Monday - Friday

8:00am - 4:00pm

Email

ctol@spscc.edu

Pressbooks

Sign in to Pressbooks using your Clipper ID and password.     Pressbooks logo sign on button.

Pressbooks is simple book production and content management system software based on WordPress technology. You can find and publish OER (Open Educational Resources) textbooks, online media collections, scholarly articles, syllabi, fiction and non-fiction books, white papers, and more in multiple formats including:

  • Thin Cartridge for Canvas
  • MOBI (for Kindle ebooks)
  • EPUB (for all other ebookstores)
  • designed PDF (for print-on-demand and digital distribution)

Books designed in Pressbooks also have integration with H5P activities, can be imported into Canvas, and can be customized to serve your own courses. As such, they can be a robust alternative to expensive textbooks. For support finding OER for your courses, please contact SPSCC's OER librarian, Ryer Banta, or check out the library's Faculty and Staff Guide on Open Education.

How to access Pressbooks

To Sign in to Pressbooks for the first time, go to SPSCC's Pressbooks site and click on the Sign in link in the upper right-hand corner ( please do not use the sign up link, or your authentication will not work).

You will be redirected to the SPSCC Authentication page, where you will enter your college email and email password. When authentication is complete you will return to the SPSCC Pressbooks page.

Create (or clone) a new book

You can create or clone books in Pressbooks. Cloning a book means that you are copying an already existing book and adding it to your SPSCC account. You can then edit and adapt the book, or import it into your Canvas course.

Create a New Book

  • To start a new book, click on Create a New Book in the top right corner.
  • Then fill out the form to create the book's URL within SPSCC's Pressbooks library.
  • When Pressbooks has finished processing your request, you will be redirected to the Dashboard of your new book.

Clone a Book

  • To clone a book, or create a new book click on the My Books item on the upper left of the red Pressbooks menu bar and select Clone a Book from the dropdown.
  • Find the url of the book you wish to clone via the directory, and open it or right click the title to copy the url to your clipboard. In your dashboard, click on Clone a Book.
  • In the form that follows, enter the URL you copied, the new url for your clone, and your desired title. Your clone process may take a few minutes, depending on the size and number of items in the original.

Find, Import, Clone, & Remix

This 44-slide PDF by Pressbooks' Steel Wagstaff gives the rationale for OER creation in our educational ecology and explains how Pressbooks was created to allow authors to utilize already-accessible open resources and share new resources in a single web-based platform. It's a good introduction to the Pressbooks environment and also contains a description of the clone and remix process later in the document.

 
SPSCC Pressbooks Tutorial

SPSCC's Alaka Pradhan has created this online introduction to Pressbooks.

You can also view the embedded version below:

Pressbooks Support

If you'd like a hand getting started with Pressbooks creation, please contact Ryer Banta or visit the Pressbooks user guide.

Pressbooks allows each institution three "Network Managers" who may act as support contacts if you need help from Pressbooks technical support. If you need network-level support or need to get in touch with Pressbooks' own support team, contact Ryer Banta, Caroline Hobbs, or Kyle Gonzalez.