9 Using Pressbooks

In this chapter, you will learn some tips and basic information about getting started with Pressbooks.^[1] Open textbook projects funded by the Regents OER Grant Program are all required to use Pressbooks for their work’s publication.

Pressbooks is a web-authoring tool that can be used to create online books and make them available to readers for free. While there are lots of platforms and tools used to create OER, Pressbooks is a great choice for text-based resources that have the general look and feel of a book. It handles more than just text, though. You can embed or upload media such as images, videos, and web content, and because the platform supports H5P, you can even add interactive content like labs, simulations, quizzes, or anything else you might want to incorporate. Pressbooks is an open-source platform based on WordPress, so if you’ve ever worked on a WordPress website or blog, the interface will look familiar to you.

Quick Start Guide

The guide has a quick start chapter, which can help you set up Pressbooks in five steps. Please note that the process for getting an account is a little different for us here at UI, since we have a locally hosted and supported Pressbooks instance. Here are our five steps:

1. Request an account from ITS through this site: https://pressbooks.uiowa.edu/. Here is the link for the site request form: https://uiowa.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_daN8AMgzsLVk4FT. Note: This step is different than what is described in the guide.
2. Add book metadata
3. Add and organize your text
4. Choose your theme
5. Export book

Book Info

Including robust and accurate information about your book allows others to find and use it. From Pressbooks:

“The ‘book info’ page is where you put information about your book. In the book publishing industry, this is called ‘metadata,’ or, data about the data. Metadata allows bookstores and libraries categorize a book and make it easier for readers to find. It answers questions such as: What is the title? Who is the author? When was it published? And what is the book about?”

The “book info” section is also where you display your copyright and licensing statement. Near the bottom of the section, you can find a “copyright” area that allows you to choose the appropriate Creative Commons license from a drop-down menu. There is also a textbox that you can use to include attributions for your source material. This can also be included at the chapter level, too. More info on displaying licensing and copyright info can be found here: https://guide.pressbooks.com/chapter/copyright-page/.

To find out where to enter metadata in Pressbooks, just follow the instructions found here: https://guide.pressbooks.com/chapter/book-info/.

Parts of a Pressbook

As you are preparing to write and compile the content of your book, it is important to give some thought to how it will be organized. By default, Pressbooks provides three sections—front matter, main body, and back matter. The dashboard allows you to add, delete, or edit content in each of these three sections. The chapters and most of the substantial content of the book is usually structured into chapters and sub-chapters in the main body.

This section of the guidebook tells you more about how to work within the sections of a Pressbook: https://guide.pressbooks.com/chapter/parts/

Adding Content

To add text and media content to your Pressbook, you’ll need to use the built-in editor. This allows you to add content in two modes, visual or text.

The visual editor is the default tool. It is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface that allows you to see styling and formatting as they are applied. You can also work in a text editor, or switch to it as necessary for specific needs. Here, you can view and edit the HTML version of any text written and formatted in the visual editor, and you can also write directly in HTML, using the toolbar as necessary.

See this chapter for more information: https://guide.pressbooks.com/chapter/visual-text-editors/