CIS-A2K/Wikimedia projects @KISS

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We are a group at Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) dedicated to digitize a selected set of books available under Creative Commons Share Alike (CC-BY-SA, this license allows users to reuse, remix and commercial use of work) on Odia Wikisource. Odia Wikisource is under incubation and needs a sustainable contribution from more contributors. We are aiming for bringing more students and some faculty from KISS as contributors to this project, and enriching this open online library. Apart from Odia Wikisource, this project also aims for content creation of Odia Wikipedia and creating resources about Santali language.

KISS is world's largest residential educational institute for students from indigenous communities of Odisha. Founded in 1993, this non-profit provides free accommodation, education from kindergarten to masters, health care, vocational training and all other amenities to about 20,000 students from 62 indigenous tribes and 13 primary groups. KISS in collaboration with Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge Program has been organizing outreach programs and events to strengthen Odia community and Wikimedia projects.

Project Scope

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  • Increase access to information online about
  • Digitizing valuable Odia books and making them available under CC-BY-SA license
  • Creating and enhancing encyclopedic content about the indigenous communities of Odisha, their culture, history, geography and oral culture, etc. and increasing access to these information online
  • Bringing more native speakers to contribute to the above topics
  • Bringing Odia Wikisource as a live project from incubation!
  • Help preserve languages and cultural heritage of indigenous communities from Odisha
  • Increase number of Goa related photos on Wikimedia Commons

Project Background

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Bhubaneswar Odia Workshop2014January10-1
CIS-A2K signed an MoU with KISS during Jauary 2014

In November 2013, Prof Partho Sengupta from KIIT School of Management invited CIS-A2K to support the KIIT University and its sister institution Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences with setting up a system that enables students to go beyond the consumer habits of just seeking information from Wikipedia and contribute to Wikipedia, and its sister projects. One Odia Wikipedia introduction session and a workshop were conducted for a batch of 16 students and 10 faculty. As the students and faculty were learning Odia typing for the first time, the output in terms of creation of content was below the expecation. In subsequent IRC meetings with the community, there was negative response for continuing with Odia Wikipedia with the same batch. After discussing this matter with the management at KISS, it was decided to revive the structure. A group consisting some of the faculty from the old batch and a few newly appointed faculty were taken as a "working group" for coordinating an "Odia Wikisource project" instead of Wikipedia for digitizing Odia books on Wikisource. This was discussed with Odia commuity and the response was positive. The core group will be training students to type and digitize 10 books of Dr Jagannath Mohanty that were re-licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0. The aim is also keep the activities more so that the Odia Wikisource come alive from incubation.