Creating OER in Pressbooks
9 Cloning and Importing
In this chapter, you will learn some of the ways that Pressbooks enables you to reuse, revise, and remix educational content. You can clone an entire book, adding a new copy to your network. You can also import content into a book.
Cloning
Cloning and importing are different processes that can be easily confused with each other. First, let’s consider cloning.
To clone a book is to make a new copy of that book. During the cloning process, the book that you copy is called the source book. The new copy, which during the cloning process is called the target book, is added to your Pressbooks network. Only a public, openly licensed book that is published in a Pressbooks network can be cloned.
Why might you want to clone a book? Pressbooks explains:
Book cloning enables a wide range of open pedagogical practices for both individuals and institutions. For example, cloning empowers students to collaborate on and improve ‘living resources’ that have been sustained over several iterations of a course, allows teachers to duplicate and immediately begin personalizing books specifically for their students’ needs, enables course chairs or program leads to quickly update shared course material (like syllabi) each semester without altering or destroying previous versions, and lets universities freely share public teaching and research materials they have developed for quick adoption and adaptation by others.
For more information on cloning, including step-by-step instructions on how to clone a book, see the chapter Clone a Book in the Pressbooks User Guide.
Importing
The import tool enables you to add content to an existing book. You might add a chapter or two or more from another book into a book you are making. You might add content from several different sources into your book. Or, you might have material of your own that you have created in a different file format that you now want to add to your book.
The import tool in Pressbooks can work with the following file formats:
- EPUB (.epub)
- Word document (.docx)
- OpenOffice documents (.odt)
- Pressbooks/WordPress XML (.xml or .wxr)
- Web page (.html or URL)
You might need to clean up the formatting of material that you add to your book using the import tool. See below for more detailed information on the formatting of imports of Word documents and from Pressbooks.
You need to create at least the shell of a book to receive imported content, because imports must be imported into a book. In other words, you cannot import content directly into the CUNY Pressbooks Network.
Importing Word Documents
There are several reasons why you might choose to import a Word document.[1] You might wish to add existing openly licensed content that is available only as a Word file. You might prefer to compose in the familiar environment of a Word document. Or, working in Word might make sense for your workflow for a project involving a group of authors.
Many authors, particularly authors who are collaborating, prefer to compose in Google Docs. You cannot import directly from Google Docs into Pressbooks. You can download your Google Doc as a Word file (.docx) and then prepare that file for import as suggested below.
When you import content from a Word document, much of the formatting of the document may not make it intact into Pressbooks. The Word import routine recognizes standard markup language for headings, lists (bullets and numbers), and textboxes. However, the Word import routine built into Pressbooks cannot include all markup language used in a Word document because there’s just too much of it, and some of the markup language is proprietary rather than standard. The Pressbooks User Guide suggests that before you import a Word document, you first apply the Normal style to the entire text and then use the Styles tool to apply the “Heading 1” style to each chapter title—otherwise, the entire document will be imported as a single chapter. You can also use supported shortcodes to mark up text requiring special formatting in Pressbooks.
Importing from Pressbooks
Even importing from Pressbooks into Pressbooks can result in changes to formatting, because the theme and custom styles are not part of what is imported.
What is included when you import from Pressbooks
- The text of imported front matter, chapters, and back matter
- The text of glossary terms, which are imported separately from any chapters in which they might appear. Links to glossary terms import with chapters as long as the associated glossary terms are imported.
- Formatting encoded in HTML
- Media library items and associated metadata
- I-frame embedded content
- Chapter-specific metadata, including the associated CC license and authors. In the case where authors are not identified for specific chapters, the book authors are identified as theauthors of any imported chapters.
- H5P activities, when links to them are included in the imported chapters
What is NOT included in an import
Nothing related to the theme and any adjustments to appearance are imported. Imported content is formatted according to the theme of the book into which it was imported. No theme options or custom styles are included in an import.
For more information on importing, including step-by-step instructions on how to use the import tool, see the chapters Import and Bring Your Content into Pressbooks in the Pressbooks User Guide.
- This section is adapted from Import a Word Document in the BCcampus Open Education Pressbooks Guide by OER Production Team, published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. ↵
Clone a Book/Cloning: This action allows users to make a copy of a public, openly licensed book published in any instance of Pressbooks.
When cloning a book, the source book is the book that is copied.
The destination book into which a cloned/source book is copied.
To bring content into Pressbooks from other sources, such as Word, EPUB, and HTML files; access the tool in the left vertical menu.
