Wikisource

Wikisource is an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its aims are to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, it has expanded to become a general-content library. The project officially began in November 24, 2003 under the name Project Sourceberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name seven months later. The project has come under criticism for lack of reliability but it is also cited by organisations such as the National Archives and Records Administration.

The project holds works that are either in the public domain or freely licenced; professionally published works or historical source documents, not vanity products; and are verifiable. Verification was initially made offline, or by trusting the reliability of other digital libraries. Now works are supported by online scans via the ProofReadPage extension, which ensures the reliability and accuracy of the project's texts. Some Wikisources now only allow works backed up with scans. While the bulk of its collection are texts, Wikisource hosts other media, from comics to film to audio books. The only original works allowed on Wikisource are translations and annotations.

History
Wikisource's early (2003–2005) history included several changes of name and location (URL), and the move to language subdomains in 2005.

Early history
The original concept for Wikisource was as storage for useful or important historical texts. These texts were intended to support Wikipedia articles, by providing primary evidence and original source texts, and as an archive in its own right. The collection was initially focussed on important historical and cultural material, distinguishing it from other digitial archives such as Project Gutenberg. The project was originally called Project Sourceberg during its planning stages (a play on words for Project Gutenberg).

In 2001, there was a dispute on Wikipedia regarding the addition of primary source material, leading to edit wars over their inclusion or deletion. Project Sourceberg was suggested as a solution to this. In describing the proposed project, user The Cunctator said, "It would be to Project Gutenberg what Wikipedia is to Nupedia," soon clarifying the statement with "we don't want to try to duplicate Project Gutenberg's efforts; rather, we want to complement them. Perhaps Project Sourceberg can mainly work as an interface for easily linking from Wikipedia to a Project Gutenberg file, and as an interface for people to easily submit new work to PG." Initial comments were sceptical, with Larry Sanger questioning the need for the project, writing "The hard question, I guess, is why we are reinventing the wheel, when Project Gutenberg already exists? We'd want to complement Project Gutenberg--how, exactly?", and Jimmy Wales adding "like Larry, I'm interested that we think it over to see what we can add to Project Gutenberg. It seems unlikely that primary sources should in general be editable by anyone -- I mean, Shakespeare is Shakespeare, unlike our commentary on his work, which is whatever we want it to be."

The project began its activity at. The contributors understood the "PS" subdomain to mean either "primary sources" or Project Sourceberg. However, this resulted in Project Sourceberg occupying the subdomain of the Pashto Wikipedia (the ISO language code of the Pashto language is "ps").

Project Sourceberg officially launched on November 24, 2003 when it received its own temporary URL, at, and all texts and discussions hosted on   were moved to the temporary address. A vote on the project's name changed it to Wikisource on December 6, 2003. Despite the change in name, the project did not move to its permanent URL (at ) until July 23, 2004.

Library contents
Wikisource collects and stores in digital format previously published texts; including novels, non-fiction works, letters, speeches, constitutional and historical documents, laws and a range of other documents. All texts collected are either free of copyright or released under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. Texts in all languages are welcome, as are translations. In addition to texts, Wikisource hosts material such as a comics, films, recordings and spoken word works. All texts held by Wikisource must have been previously published; the project does not host "vanity press" books or documents produced by its contributors.

A scanned source is preferred on many Wikisources and required on some. Most Wikisources will, however, accept works transcribed from offline sources or acquired from other digital libraries. The requirement for prior publication can also be waived in a small number of cases if the work is a source document of notable historical importance. The legal requirement for works to be licensed or free of copyright remains constant.

The only original pieces accepted by Wikisource are annotations and translations. Wikisource, and its sister project Wikibooks, has the capacity for annotated editions of texts. On Wikisource, the annotations are supplementary to the original text, which remains the primary objective of the project. By contrast, on Wikibooks the annotations are primary, with the original text as only a reference or supplement, if present at all. Annotated editions are more popular on the German Wikisource. The project also accommodates translations of texts provided by its users. A significant translation on the English Wikisource is the Wiki Bible project, intended to create a new, "laissez-faire translation" of The Bible.