Your Own Bound Volume Wiki Library

: Image via Wikipedia

Do you miss the good old days when you could gaze lovingly at your WorldBook or Encyclopedia Britannica volumes adorning your shelves, offering the look of erudite scholarship whether or not you actually opened them? Have you ever read a Wikipedia entry and thought to yourself “Self, I would really love to have this in print form so that I can refer to it whenever I want, even if my computer is nowhere to be found”? Well, now you can, thanks to German startup PediaPress (and Wikipedia). According to Robin Wauters at Techcrunch, the two have teamed up to provide a wiki-to-print feature and have just added six languages in addition to German.

The feature is still in its test phase and you can consult Wikipedia’s help section for more information. Wauters advises that books can include tables of contents and category lists. While the paper books start at $8.90 for 100 pages plus shipping, you can download the PDF for free and even make your own books if you fancy yourself a crafter.

Right now, it is available for registered users only, but likely will be opened up to non-registered users at some undetermined future date. Wauters includes a link to a sample book, ‘Amphibious Aircrafts’ here (PDF).

Pretty cool way to build up your library on most any topic you can imagine. Now, if they could just get the reliability issue under control.

UPDATE: Repaired, Robin – you are at Techcrunch now [ sorry :)) ]