Getting Started

Activate your account

To access Pressbooks, visit: pressbooks.senecacollege.ca.

Sign in with your Seneca username and password and that’s it, you’ve activated your account!

Create a Book

You will be prompted to create a book.

  1. Enter a website address for your book.

    • only letters and numbers, no spaces, punctuation, or special characters

    • must be unique and cannot be changed

  2. Enter a title (does not have to be unique and can be changed)

  3. Set your book to private or public

NOTE: you can create as many additional books as you like or you can Clone a book, see below for instructions.

Cloning a Book

The “clone” feature allows you copy exactly an openly licensed textbook that has been published using Pressbooks software. To clone a book:

  1. Locate a pressbooks book you would like to clone in open textbook collections, such as Open Textbook Library, eCampus Ontario Open Textbook Library, BCcampus Open Textbook Collection

  2. Copy the URL

  3. In Pressbooks, go to My Catalog -> Clone a book

  4. Enter the source URL from the original book

  5. Enter a new URL for your copy

    • only letters and numbers, no spaces, punctuation, or special characters

    • must be unique and cannot be changed

  6. Enter a new title for your book if you'd like

  7. It will take a minute or two to clone

  8. Once cloned you can edit any of the text. All of the attributions should automatically appear, citing the previous authors and editors.

Importing Content Into a Book

Importing allows you to import various file types into Pressbooks. This is less exact than the cloning function but allows you to copy content from non-pressbooks formats, such as EPUB or Word.

  1. First create a new empty book

  2. Go to Tools -> Import

  3. Select your filetype

  4. Either upload your file or input the URL of the file and click Begin Import.

Get to Know the Admin Menu

Accessibility

For a full guide to accessibility in Pressbooks, consult the Accessibility Toolkit created by BCcampus.

NOTE: there are two accessible themes in Pressbooks - McLuhan and Jacobs, please choose one of these when creating a book.

Determine Privacy Settings

You can control privacy settings for the entire book:

  1. Settings -> Sharing & Privacy

  2. Next to Book Visibility, select “Public” or “Private”

  3. Click Save Changes

You can also choose to hide individual chapters or sections of your book:

  1. Go to Organize

  2. Find the Show in Web and/or Show in Exports column for a specific chapter or section

  3. Check or uncheck the boxes to determine what you would like to display

Organize Your Book

You can organize your content to make accessing the content easier. To add content to each area, click on the Add button on the left side.

  • Front Matter

-> Dedication, Acknowledgements, Preface, etc.

  • Parts

-> Chapters

  • Back Matter

-> Appendices, Glossary, etc.

For Front Matter and Back Matter there are many types of content to add, look for the Type drop down on the bottom right-hand side of the page