Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Digitisation of early photographs of the terracotta temples of Bengal (ID: 22001418)

Copyright of the materials and few other observations

Hi, thanks for submitting this interesting proposal. I am sharing few observations on behalf of West Bengal Wikimedians User Group.

• We are worried about the copyright status of the photographs which is to be digitized. As mentioned in the proposal, the photographs are from 1970s and 1980s, which makes them copyrighted unless the photographers have re-licensed them under public domain or CC-BY-SA license. Although it is mentioned that the materials are donated and gifted to the grant proposers, but it does not mention anywhere that the photographers or their heirs or copyright representatives have agreed to release these photographs under open license. The clear process of re-licensing will prevent the digitized images to be uploaded into Wikimedia Commons which does not allow copyrighted materials on their website. I think, this should be clearly mentioned in the proposal before getting consideration of funding.
• #6.1.1 says,

  The built heritage of West Bengal and Bangladesh is very underrepresented on Wikipedia. The region has more than 4000 historical monuments, but coverage is poor compared to other regions of the Indian subcontinent.

We are not sure that built heritage of West Bengal is still underrepresented on Wikimedia sites compared to other regions of the Indian sub-continent as West Bengal Wikimedians User Group is still running its Wiki Exploration Program for last 5 years to document the built heritage of West Bengal along with its terracotta works and uploading thousands of photographs each year. I am not aware of any other Wikimedia initiative in the Indian subcontinent to digitally preserve the built heritage of their regions.

• # 6.1.2 says,

  Many of the monuments in these photographs are no longer extant and these images will never be available to researchers and the general public unless these documents are digitised.

We totally agree with this. From our experience in the exploration program, we are witnessing that the terracotta reliefs are getting disappeared rapidly for many reasons. Unless we preserve the old photographs, many of the reliefs will be lost forever from history.

• # 11.2 says,

  Reached out the the West Bengal Wikimedians Group owners to make them aware of the project.

I guess, there are no owners of the user group. There are representatives though as per its bylaws. I confirm that the applicant Mr. Amit Guha has reached out to one of our representatives via mail.

• This is a nice initiative to engage GLAM institutes, researchers and Wikimedia communities and we welcome these kind of initiatives in our region. We have no issue curating the metadata and/or uploading the digitized photographs or be of any other help needed, provided the copyright status of the photographs are clarified. Also, as we have thousands of photographs of terracotta reliefs of the region uploaded to Wikimedia Commons from recent times, we welcome the proposers to engage with us to curate the metadata there too. --

Bodhisattwa (talk) 04:27, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your responses and clarifications.

• Please could you let me know the process to relicense the photographs so that they can be published on Wikimedia? Dr George Michell gifted me his slides and I am happy to release them under open license. Hitesranjan Sanyal's family donated his slides to CSSS, and I am happy to work with them to release the photos under public license.
• I was not aware of the fantastic work done by the West Bengal Wikimedians Group on documenting terracotta temples and the photographs uploaded. Thank you for alerting me to this. It is a goldmine for researchers like me. Looking now at these photographs through the links you provided, I congratulate the group on the work done and I will remove the point about lack of representation on Wikipedia from my application.
• On a somewhat related note, I noticed that there are no biographical Wikipedia pages on some of the pioneers who surveyed and documented temples in the 1960s to 1990s. I was wondering if the group would be interested in working with us to build these pages, in particular for Hitesranjan Sanyal, Tarapada Santra, Amiyakumar Bandyopadhyay, Pranab Ray, Sambhunath Mitra, and George Michell.
• Finally, please could you let me know the next steps to engage with you to help with research, meta-data creation, and uploading once digitisation in complete. I am in Kolkata in the last 2 weeks of December and if there are any meetups then I would love to participate.

AmitGuha (talk) 18:50, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

@AmitGuha:, thanks for your reply.

• As I am not sure who the current copyright holder of these photographs are, I will try to cover all the scenarios. The re-licensing process for this proposal will work as follows.
  • Copyright of a photograph always lies with the photographer unless they have released it. So, if Dr. Michel and Hitesh Ranjan Sanyal's heirs have not provided you or CSSS any written document where it is clearly mentioned that they have transferred the copyright rights of the photographs, which they have donated or gifted to you or CSSS, then the copyright still lies with them. In that case, you have to request and convince Dr. Michel and Mr. Sanyal's heirs to send mails to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org to release the copyright under CC-BY-SA license.
  • If Dr. Michel and Mr. Sanyal's heirs have transferred the copyright of those photographs to you and CSSS respectively, then that makes you and CSSS the copyright holder of the respective photographs and gives you and CSSS the right to release the copyright under the said license by sending mail to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org . You can add the written documents from Dr. Mitchel and Mr. Sanyal's heirs about their transfer of the copyright as evidence of your claim.

After sending those mails, the group of volunteers responsible for handling the process will verify that the permission statement is sufficient and authentic and act accordingly to process the claims. You can go through this page to learn more about the details of the process. It is very very important that you clear the copyright release process even before starting the digitization project as any disputes regarding copyrights can lead to deletion of those photographs from Wikimedia Commons as the website takes copyright issues very seriously.

• We are glad that you found our uploads valuable.
• Sure, we can work together to build the Wikipedia pages.
• There are many ways for us to engage in this project with you by helping you with the uploading process, help build the structured data of these photographs, categorize them in a correct way, help reuse them on relevant Wikipedia articles etc. There are also many ways to work together beyond this proposal like arranging editathons to bring together like minded people to create articles on these topic and add missing citations or bring experts on terracotta of Bengal on board to add data about persons or deities depicted on reliefs etc. There are lots of possibilities of collaboration, I guess. Anyway, we have not planned for any physical meetup in December till now. I will let you know if something comes up. In any way, we can meet online if you want.

Bodhisattwa (talk) 04:23, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

• Many thanks for your response. I have emailed Dr Michell asking him to write to me confirming that he has gifted his photographs to me. In your note above I see that the process requires a "written document". Will an email from him suffice or does it have to be a physical document? I have also asked CSSS for both evidence that Hitesranjan Sanyal's photos were donated to them, and also asked them (CSSS) to email permissions-commons@wikimedia.org to release the copyright under CC-BY-SA license.
• Thank you for the link to the page containing details of the process. Do you know how long it usually takes to review and approve such requests.

AmitGuha (talk) 21:53, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

VRT agent (verify): "he has gifted his photographs to me" - No. That's not valid. We need the statement from him, as pdf or jpg if he can't email us directly, but just a letter like that is not enought. It must be clear and explicit that he transfers full copyrights to you, or he must sends our permission template signed, or email us directly with the template. I think the second or third choices are the best. There must exist absolutely no doubt about the license he agrees, and that he accepts the use by third parties and commercial use. The template it's the most simple and direct process for do that. Letters/emails with random content seems to be ambigous and cause more problems and take more time than do the things properly. --Ganímedes (talk) 13:23, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Permissions: George Michell (accepted)

VRT agent (verify): Hello Bodhisattwa, in my capacity as a VRT agent, I have accepted the permissions concerning images from George Michell that concern this grant proposal. The conversation is available in ticket:2023013010000415. ─ The Aafī ^(talk) 23:44, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

The images are released under Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 4.0 International, a Wikimedia Commons compatible license. My suggestion would be that when the images are uploaded on Wikimedia Commons, a link to this ticket be included on all the file pages that it concerns. This could be done by making a template and incorporating that template on file pages. ─ The Aafī ^(talk) 23:54, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

@TheAafi:, thanks a lot for letting us know about the licensing. I think, the project is good to go now. Best wishes, -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 08:56, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Follow-up Questions from Programme Officer

Hello @AmitGuha,

Thank you for your application.

Now that we have a closure on the permissions topic above, we can move this grant application to programme review. Thank you for your patience.

We have a few follow-up questions/comments for you and hope to receive your responses by sometime this week and target to provide an update on funding outcomes by next week.

1) Would you be able to provide a timeline for your project?

2) Could you provide more details on how you plan to work with other partners to implement this project? While you have briefly shared this in questions 2 and 3, it would be useful if you could elaborate on the approaches you have listed and whether they have been consulted and agreed to be part of the project (i.e. a more detailed implementation plan)?

3) If you were to do a risk assessment of your project, what are the areas that you are most concerned about and how do you plan to mitigate these risks? What type of additional support (beyond grant funding) do you foresee requiring?

4) For the two research scholars that you are planning to work with - Kolkata-based research scholars Atmajit Mukherjee and Chayana Mondal, could you provide more details on their research portfolios and whether they have done similar work in the past? How do you plan to assess the deliverables and quality of the work produced? And how do you plan to access and assess the output that is put on the institutional archives?

5) Could you provide a breakdown of roles and responsibilities between yourself and Sujaan Mukherjee (SujaanM89)?

6) How do you plan to make the content more accessible and usable to students, academics and independent researchers studying the art, architecture, and social and religious history of Bengal from Wikimedia communities and academic institutions?

7) On Learning, sharing and evaluation (question 15), perhaps you can further elaborate on the below in the detailed implementation plan. "Benchmark the ability of the Wikimedia group and institutions to work together to: 1) Digitise ~1250 photos and slides taken in the 1970s-80s 2) Do the research necessary to create meta-data for the photographs 3) Upload the photos and meta-data to Wikimedia and an institutional archive 4) Publicise the project and its outputs and ensure public awareness of the repository"

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you.

Regards, Jacqueline JChen (WMF) (talk) 08:14, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello @JChen (WMF)

1. Project Timeline: Documented in a high-level project plan. Please let me know if you need more detail.
2. Partners, roles, and responsibilities:
   1. British Library: Digitisation of the slides. Amit has agreed costs and timelines with the team at BL. Contract will be drawn out as soon as project starts. Amit will physically deliver the slides in batches of 100 to the BL team who will digitise each batch in one week.
   2. JBMRC: Meta-data creation and uploading images and data to the JBMRC site. The JBMRC team will start work in parallel as soon as the first set of images are available from BL. Sujaan will coordinate the JBMRC work. The research associates to do the work have been identified. The work will be carried out against formal invoices raised by JBMRC and paid by Amit.
   3. WBUG: Have had an initial discussion with @Bodhisattwa on this and agreed that once JBMRC has created meta-data, we will reach out to WBUG volunteers to upload the images to Wikimedia.
   4. Bengal Heritage Foundation (BHF): This organisation will promote the project amongst its members and the wider Bengali and Indian diaspora and organisations in the UK and India. Amit is a core member of BHF and will coordinate the efforts.
3. Risk Assessment: Risks, mitigation, and planned support is documented in this risk register.
4. Research scholars qualifications and assessment of work and outputs:
   1. Atmajit and Chayana have completed meta-data creation on a similar online archive of photographs in 2021-22. Their CVs are here
   2. Sujaan will oversee the meta-data creation in Kolkata weekly, and Amit/Sujaan will schedule monthly sessions to review output jointly.
   3. The images and metadata will be published to a staging area for review before it is published to the JBMRC website for Bengal's religious architecture. There will be a sub-section in this webspace for the digitised photos from this project.
5. Sujaan versus Amit responsibilities: Amit will be primarily coordinating the digitisation of the images with the British Library. Sujaan will be overseeing the meta-data creation and upload of photos to the JBMRC website. Amit will coordinate the upload to Wikimedia along with @Bodhisattwa. Amit will coordinate all marketing and any exhibitions of the photos in UK/India.
6. Making the content usable and accessible: We are planning the following to raise awareness of the project and its outputs.
   1. A formal launch in Kolkata at a programme in December 2023 jointly hosted by the Bengal Heritage Foundation (BHF) and JBMRC.
   2. Throughout the project and beyond selected images will be posted on Social Media (Twitter/Instagram) via BHF/JBMRC/personal handles.
   3. Host physical exhibitions of selected photographs in London and Kolkata. Possible venues are:
      1. London: The Nehru Centre, The British Library, SOAS
      2. Kolkata: JBMRC, Indian Museum, State Archeological Museum
   4. On Learning, sharing and evaluation: Please could you let me know if the information above answers this question. If not, I will require help to be able to answer this question correctly.

AmitGuha (talk) 22:34, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Your grant application has been approved

Hello @AmitGuha

Congratulations, your grant application has been approved.

Thank you for taking time to respond to the questions. I have also adjusted the timeline of your project. The duration will be from 1 Jul to 31 Dec 2023 based on your updated project plan.

Let's continue to keep in touch and I'll encourage you to use this talk page to document discussions, progress or use it as a resource page so that we can support you as you progress. Of course, this is if you have the bandwidth and find it useful. =)

All the best!

Regards, Jacqueline JChen (WMF) (talk) 04:03, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Additional Resources

Hello @AmitGuha,

I'm starting a thread on resource sharing here. Please feel free to add resources about your project and we'll do the same if we come across any materials that may be useful.

• Instructions for post award: Grants:Processing/Grantee Portal/Post award/Individuals
• Reporting forms for rapid fund. Your report is due one month after the grant ends. The grant duration and reporting requirements can be found in your grant agreement. Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Applications and Guides#Reporting forms 2
• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Documenting_project_expenses
• https://diff.wikimedia.org
• Examples of other wikimedians who have documented their projects -
  • Initial project grant funded by Wikimedia Foundation: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Performing_Arts_Aotearoa_-_Wiki_Project/Final
  • Project page of project grant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_New_Zealand/Pasifika_Arts_Aotearoa
  • Additional grant secured for a similar theme when the project grant ended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_New_Zealand/Performing_Arts_Aotearoa

Thank you.

Regards, Jacqueline JChen (WMF) (talk) 04:05, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Project Update (November 2023)

Some updates on the project:

• The number of usable slides is 650 (original estimate was 1100). This is because many of the pictures are not relevant to the project and some of them are not by George Michell and hence not covered by the copyright release.
• British Library have completed digitisation of 350 slides (high resolution 600 dpi). The quality of the digitisation is excellent, some samples are here
• BL have transferred these images via a secure online link to CSSSC, where the documentation and metadata creation for these 350 images is now complete.
• Unfortunately, in late October, British Library was the victim of a cyber attack. This has meant that the digitisation of the remaining 300 slides is now paused until the services resume. This is likely to result in a delay to the project timelines.
• The research team in CSSSC are looking to work with WBUG to create Wikipedia biography pages for George Michell and some of the other scholars of Bengal Architecture such as Hitesranjan Sanyal, Tarapada Santra, and Amiyakumar Bandyopadhyay.
• CSSSC and Bengal Heritage Foundation is planning an event in Kolkata (in Dec 2024) to launch the archive. We are planning to have lectures by George Michell and others as part of this event.

AmitGuha (talk) 21:30, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Project Update and Extension (January 2024)

Unfortunately the problems continue at the British Library through December, and their services have still not recovered.

In mid-December, the grant project team decided that we needed to move to a different digitisation service provider. We evaluated several companies in the UK and finally selected Vintage Photo Labs as they were able to digitise in the required format and resolution TIFF and 600 dpi. They also have a pickup and drop off service in London.

Vintage Photo Labs started the digitisation work in the new year and CSSSC reviewed the initial work and said that the results were as good or better than the British Library. VPL then completed the full digitisation and also took photos of the metadata notes for each of the 350 slides. The work was completed in mid-January and handed over to the team at CSSSC for metadata creation.

Due to the delays at British Library the project has now been delayed by 3 months. We would like to request an extension of the project to 30th April 2024. The remaining work between now and then is:

• Create meta data for all the remaining 350 images
• To upload all images to the CSSSC website
• To upload all images onto Wikimedia
• To send the images and metadata to AIIS as they would like to host the images as well

AmitGuha (talk) 22:30, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

@AmitGuha, thanks for the update. I have reviewed and formally approved it. The new grant end date is April 30, 2024, and the final report is due on May 30, 2024. Best regards, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 11:51, 30 January 2024 (UTC)