Digitisation, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource Orientation Workshop at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, Dist.Pune

Background

A team of 15 youths from Pabal and surrounding villages in Shirur block of Pune district was trained in Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in February 2017. This team also expressed their readiness in working for digitisation, Commons upload and Wikisource OCR process. Two facilitators were trained as resource persons in MKCL, Pune. The workshop was actively attended by 30 youths. The future plan is to deploy this trained human resource in digitisation activity at various libraries and museums. The scanning of various old encyclopedias in Marathi is also proposed for Wiktionary project.
Vigyan Ashram took lead in organising this workshop. CIS-A2K facilitated the process. Eminent ecologist Prof. Madhav Gadgil and Marathi Community Advocate Subodh Kulkarni acted as Resource Person.

Organisers

• Vigyan Ashram, Pabal
• CIS-A2K

Launch

Date : 3rd April 2017
Time : 10am to 4PM
Place : Pabal,Pune, Maharashtra,India
Venue : Seminar hall in Vigyan Ashram, Pabal
Participants : 30

Outcomes

During the training session,the scanner suddenly went out of order. Therefore scanning activity could not be completed. The uploading process of books from Internet Archive to Wikimedia Commons was explained. The next step of bringing book from Commons to Wikisource was demonstrated through two methods. The page by page OCR process and converting complete book through OCR4Wikisource program was demonstrated. As this program runs only on Linux, limitation of machines was hurdle in taking hands on experience.

Photo gallery

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  Scanning training
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  Learning while doing
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  Facilitator explaining the process
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  Prof. Madhav Gadgil delivering on Knowledge generation