Introduction to LibreTexts: Creating and Remixing

Steps to Creating a Book in LibreTexts

First, you must create a Project. A Project is a project management page where you can change the status, update your progress, talk with team mates, and contact tech support.

1. Log into LibreTexts Conductor
2. Click on the green Create a Conductor Project button. Enter a Project Title and click the green + Create Project button.

• You will have six main menu areas on this screen:
  1. Edit Properties: Here you can change your project name, status, and set your default CC License. You can also delete your project here.
  2. Manage Team: Add or remove team members and set their roles.
  3. Timeline: Create a project timeline.
  4. Peer Review: Have students or others review your work.
  5. Accessibility: Tool for reviewing accessibility issues.
  6. More Tools: Jump to OER Remixer.

3. Click on the green + Create Book button under Important Links (Shown below)

4. Select the subject library for your book (this cannot be changed later).
5. Enter the Book Title (this can be changed later).
6. Click on the Create Book button.
7. You will now have a blue Textbook Link button where the +Create Book button was. Click on that to open your book.
   • NOTE: Sometimes the platform's Single Sign On doesn't carry over between tools. You may need to sign in again.
8. You should see a screen similar to that shown below. Click on the + Page Settings menu above the book title (shown as Test Project 3 below). You will see a number of options you can set including: Book Thumbnail, Article type, Author, Cover Page, License, Show TOC, etc. You can change these settings for each individual page of the book.

8. Make sure that Cover Page is set to 'yes'. Refresh the page if you need to set that to yes. This should auto-populate your Front Matter and Back Matter pages on this and future books. These are automatically generated pages that include a lot of automated content and verbiage for you.

The OER Remixer provides an easy way to set up your book's organization. You can create, delete, and rearrange pages quickly.

1. To open the Remixer, open your project and click on the go to the blue Textbook Link button.
2. In the blue menu along the left-hand side, click on Tools. (If you do not see this menu, log in again.)
3. Click on OER Remixer at the top.
4. On the Remixer page, click on the toggle to switch to Edit Remix Mode (for editing an existing book, shown below).

3. Scroll down and click the plus sign next to Sandboxes.
4. You should be able to select your book from there. If you do not see it, look to the top of that list and see if it's listed as 'Last Linked' (Shown below). Select your book, then click on Reremix Selection to the right.

Using the Remixer

In the 'Library Panel' to the left, you can select other OER titles in LibreTexts and copy chapters/pages from them, into your new work.

In the 'Remix Panel' to the right, you can reorganize and rename your pages, as well as create new pages. The colors of these items will change as you edit them, to show the changes made.

You can drag items to move them and right-click on them to make edits. Above the 'Remix Panel' there are several buttons for tools to:

• Create a New Page
• Edit the select Page Properties
• Delete the selected page
• Undo/Redo changes
• Save To Server

When you have made several changes, you must save to server to keep them upon leaving this page.

Note: Make sure to name your new book before saving it. The default name is just a series of alphanumeric characters that makes it difficult to find if you have multiple titles.

Book Organization in LibreTexts

LibreTexts organizes books by chapters and pages. Chapters can have sub-pages. Within those chapters and sub-pages, figures are referenced using a three-digit number. This is different from most books which use a two-digit figure reference such as Figure 1.1. This is because of how elements are set up and stored in LibreTexts and it allows for easy automatic updating when Remixing content. Even if you grab a module from another LibreTexts book and move it into your own, the figure reference numbers will automatically update!

Once you've set up your book's organization/list of chapters and pages, you can start to edit content on the pages!

1. Click on your name in the black editor bar (top-right), then click on Your Sandbox once again; then select the book you want to edit.
2. You can drag and drop chapters on this page to reorganize your book.
3. To edit your content, select the chapter that you wish to edit. Then click on Edit in the black bar at the top.

There are two ribbons across the top, which resemble ribbons in similar visual editors such as Microsoft Word.

You will sometimes see template code such as that shown above, already entered into the text area. These blocks auto-populate certain information and should be left alone unless you wish to remove the auto-generated content.

The First Ribbon

• Format: Change text alignment, add indentation, change fonts and headings.
• Style: Add block quote, comments, conditional formatting, CSS, or Javascript.
• Elements: Insert lists, lines and page breaks, special characters, videos, links, anchors, images, and tables.

The Second Ribbon

This looks a lot like your standard Microsoft Office editing tool ribbon and contains:

• Save
• Text style drop-down
• Bold, italics, underline
• Font color and highlight
• Remove format
• Lists/bullets
• Text alignment
• Insert hyperlinks
• Insert images (you can also just drag and drop an image from your desktop)
• Insert table
• Search and replace (magnifying glass icon)
• Insert Adapt question
• Query H5P, iMath, or WebWork
• Accessibility checker tool (person icon)

You can also click on </> HTML to view and edit the HTML of the page directly.

Boxes

There is a drop-down for "Boxes". These allow you to insert specially pre-formatted types of boxes such as notes, definitions, etc. An example is shown below.