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CIS-A2K/Events/Academy of Comparative Philosophy and Religion GLAM Project

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The Academy of Comparative Philosophy & Religion (ACPR) was founded in 1952 as a Public Trust in the Educational & Research category at Belagavi in Karnataka state. The academy was conceived by philosopher, scholar and saint R. D. alias Gurudev Ranade way back in 1924 in Pune and started it's work. It was formally registered in 1952.
As the works of Gurudev Ranade are in public domain as per Indian Copyright law, the academy has planned to digitise the books published by them and others. The academy has approached CIS-A2K to facilitate the archive project on Gurudev Ranade, which will include works by Gurudev, works on Gurudev & his philosophy, images and audio-visuals.

First Wikimedia orientation session

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The session to introduce Wikimedia projects and archive process to ACPR trustees and members was conducted at Lokmanya Granthalaya hall, Belagavi on 24 October between 11am to 1pm. In this session, elaborate demonstration of all Wikimedia projects was done. The discussion on copyright issues, relicensing procedure and organisational compliances was held. The basics of editing and uploading were also explained. Total 8 members participated in this session.

Follow-up meeting with the trustees

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The follow-up meeting to list all the publications, works and other documents was conducted on 30 November 2022 at ACPR, Belagavi. In the meeting with management members, the process of relicensing on Wikimedia projects was discussed in detail with some previous cases of some organisations. The works were compiled, listed and categorised as below -

  • ACPR Publications:
  1. Books by Gurudev in English - 7
  2. Books by other authors in English - 36
  3. Books by other authors in Kannada - 9
  4. Books by other authors in Marathi - 9
  5. Books by other authors in Hindi - 1

Total ACPR publications – 62

  • ACPR published Pathway to God journal editions from 1966 – approx. 100 issues
  • Other publications:
  1. Books by Gurudev published before 1965 - 7
  2. Books by Gurudev published after 1965 - 17

(English - 10, Marathi - 7) Total other publications - 24

The metadata of all these works has been prepared in structured format which will be integrated with Wikidata.

Digitisation set-up and training workshop

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CIS-A2K conducted training workshop and meetings on 28 April 2023 to launch the project with ACPR organisation. The meeting with secretary and trustees was conducted to finalise the resolutions, the Commons declarations for relicensing and metadata of all the publications. We also checked few scanning work previously done. The categorisation of books was done as per the priority for scanning.

We have placed CZur scanner at the ACPR library. The demonstration cum hands-on training session on scanning and processing was done with two staff members deputed by ACPR. The scanning set-up was done in proper room after checking the ventilation, light, cleanliness etc.

We are supporting them in the process regularly via video calls, Google meet and WhatsApp group. The team is enthusiastic and developed interest in the activity. As a result, as on today they have completed the scanning & processing of 12 books and successfully converted them into pdf file. The quality of work is improved a lot after the second book. We are planning to create small step by step video tutorials on all the aspects of scanning process. This will help to monitor and review the work remotely. The aspects to be covered are - setting up, scan process, post-processing, adding or inserting missing/incorrect pages, actions before compiling the final pdf, standardisation of the page size, batch process etc. We also trying to collaborate with some technical institute with this project for smooth operations, troubleshooting and expansion.

Uploading on Wikimedia projects and inauguration

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ACPR organised three day program on the occasion of Gurudev Ranade's death anniversary. During this program, the digitisation activity was visited by various scholars, academic institutions, High Court judges, Govt. officers and students. The demonstration sessions were arranged on these days to spread the awareness about free knowledge, Wikimedia projects and digitisation program. The inauguration was done on 6 June in a public ceremony at ACPR, Belagavi. As of now total 29 books and 23 media files have been uploaded under the following category -

The structured data of 60 books has been created in Wikidata and it is linked to all these files.

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    ACPR main building in Belagavi
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    Hall in ACPR Belagavi
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    Foundation plaque in ACPR Belagavi
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    Wikimedia orientation session of ACPR members by CIS-A2K
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    Sorting and listing of books in ACPR library, Belagavi
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    Digitisation team and setup at ACPR, Belagavi
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