Grants:IEG/Digitization of Important Libraries Book Catalog in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana/Midpoint

This project is funded by an Individual Engagement Grant

Welcome to this project's midpoint report! This report shares progress and learnings from the Individual Engagement Grantee's first 3 months.

Summary

In a few short sentences or bullet points, give the main highlights of what happened with your project so far.

• Taken permissions to publish 3 library catalogs in telugu wikipedia and also collected those using xerox and scans.
• Published 2 library catalogs in telugu wikipedia which collectively consists of nearly more than 30,000 books. Made catalog pages of 40,000 books into unicode text, and going to publish them in telugu wikipedia.
• Contacted and talked to nearly with 10 library authorities in Srikakulam, vijayanagaram, east godavari, west godavari, krishna, guntur districts of Andhra pradesh and hyderabad district of telangana states. Many of these trails turned fruitful with well established partnerships that are going to result contant donation, conducting outreach programs other than providing catalogs to wikipedia.
• Conducted 2 awareness programs, 2 wiki-training sessions, one edit-a-thon in various libraries and other places for diff. kinds of participants to make this program reach more. Conducted a training camps to staff of annamayya library, guntur which helped us in turning them active wikimedians.
• Nearly 14 new articles created and adding them to list totally 22 articles has been developed using the information collected in the libraries. And wikisource also been enriched with 2 new books from staff of annamayya library. 17 new users have started working for telugu wikipedia and existing wikipedians also participating in project through on-wiki and off-wiki efforts.
• Project has got a good publicity in telugu media which inturn helped this project and also telugu wiki project.

Methods and activities

How have you setup your project, and what work has been completed so far?

Describe how you've setup your experiment or pilot, sharing your key focuses so far and including links to any background research or past learning that has guided your decisions. List and describe the activities you've undertaken as part of your project to this point.

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• Even before starting of this project I've talked with some library authorities and related persons. As per my previous knowledge about private libraries I've chosen some important libraries before actual start date.
• After starting the project I've again made visits to libraries in guntur, rajahmundry, pithapuram, vijayanagaram and srikakulam. In this visit, first of all I've presented the Idea and organization of the wikipedia and some of them got inspired on this organization & idea. Later I've shared them the idea of project. Almost everyone of them agreed to share library catalogs in free licenses.
• Simultaneously I've seen the viability and possibilities of making these catalogs available. I've found few historic and legendary libraries lost the major portion of books and left with some for namesake. So, I've dropped them from this project plan. But some of those libraries are in very good condition.
• According to the available catalogs format, I've framed the strategy to make them digitize. Annamayya library (guntur) started digitizing their library catalogs. So, I've trained their library staff and conducted awareness program & edit-a-thons to them and made them good wikipedians finally. Now they are volunteering their catalog to make it available in wikipedia.
• On the other hand, some other libraries do only have hard copy of catalogs. We've taken Xeroxes and scanned copies of those catalogs. Distributed these copies and conducted awareness program to the wikipedians who came forward to join hands in this effort.
• Conducted awareness programs and wiki-training programs in Historical libraries Sri gowthami library, rajahmundry and Suryaraya vidyananda library, pithapuram. Involved another IEGrantee, telugu wikimedian Pavan Santhosh in rajahmundry program and Sr.wikipedian Rajachandra in pithapuram program. Sr.wikipedian KVR lohit accompanied me in visits to eminent personalities of telugu library movement and important libraries in Srikakulam and vijayanagaram region.
• In vijayanagaram, we've visited some historically acclaimed colleges and gathered information about their alumni and photographs in CC BY SA. These journies and the information regarding many libraries are recorded in my blog called godavari, which attained attention from some telugu enthusiasts in internet towards the cause. And encouraged wikipedians to develop the respective pages in telugu wikipedia.
• Met very eminent personalities of telugu public library movement which is very fruitful in developing political, social awareness in telugu people. And met few people who have lead successful crowd voulenteering efforts in telugu literature. Some of them are Velaga venkatappayya, Kalipatnam Ramarao, Lanka Suryanarayana, Sannidhanam Narasimha Sharma, Modugula Ravikrishna and others. Took notes on their valuable experiences and developed & sharpened the plan accordingly.

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  with kalipatnam ramarao
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  taking info from kalipatnam ramarao
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  with velaga venkatappayya

Midpoint outcomes

What are the results of your project or any experiments you’ve worked on so far?

Please discuss anything you have created or changed (organized, built, grown, etc) as a result of your project to date.

• Added catalog pages containing catalog of annamayya library in unicode text at telugu wikipedia. This is a catalog of nearly 30,000 telugu books present in that library.
• Received catalogs from historically acclaimed Gouthami library(Rajahmundry), Suryaraya Vidyananda library(pithapuram) from the authorities. I've met Kalipatnam ramarao who has successfully created his dream project - Kathanilayam, a collection of information about every telugu story writer and even every telugu story. He ensured that he'll give the above said information and photographs of all authors to wikipedia projects in CC BY SA 4.0.
• Publicized the activities and the ideas implementing through this project widely in telugu news papers and media. These efforts got recognized widely through vibrant media coverage which inturn helps the understanding of wider public about wikipedia. Among the news items and programs covered these efforts, news item covered in 2nd page of eenadu main page, special item with a full page article in eenadu west godavari district center page, a 15 min. long program about my project in etv2, etc., are very impressive and a large scale media efforts ever seen recent times about telugu wikipedia. Using this media focus we could also publicize about ongoing wiki-project on godavari pushkaralu with a full page article on east godavari district edition of eenadu, which covered the efforts of Pavan santhosh, Pranayraj vangari, Rajasekhar and some other active wikipedians.
• Trained annamayya granthalayam staff and suryaraya granthalayam staff to scan, upload and create pages in telugu wikisource. This resulted in uploading nearly 3 copyright free books in telugu wikisource.
• Through the edit-a-thons, awareness programs, training sessions Nearly 17 new users have started working for telugu wikipedia. Nearly 8 existing wikipedians started contributing to this project and through the outreach programs of this project I could make 2 wikipedians who has become inactive these days into active wikipedians again.
• Nearly 14 new articles created and adding them to list totally 22 articles has been developed using the information collected in the libraries.
• Trained and helped in structurizing the annamayya sankeertanas, a huge repository of 16000 books classical lyrics written by 15th century poet annamayya. This huge work is being done by volunteers interested in telugu culture and heritage as well as annamayya literature. I've made a small help them in some aspects of their work and made them aware of the telugu wikipedia and its voluntary nature.
• Our outreach programs indirectly helping telugu usage in internet. Many of our participants learning to type in telugu using telugu wikipedia & in offline too.

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  Awarness Program at Gouthami Library Rajamundry
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  training session
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  On going Program
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  sutyaraya library of Pithapuram
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  on wiki training at Annamayya library of Guntur

Finances

Please take some time to update the table in your project finances page. Check that you’ve listed all approved and actual expenditures as instructed. If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided there to explain them.

Then, answer the following question here: Have you spent your funds according to plan so far? Please briefly describe any major changes to budget or expenditures that you anticipate for the second half of your project.

• budget updated in finance page

there are some extra necessary visits to those library's i have selected. so i could not manage funds as for project budget page. some times there are long travel, some are nearer. and some ware costs are expense,some ware low.like these causes we have adjusted funds.

Learning

The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you are taking enough risks to learn something really interesting! Please use the below sections to describe what is working and what you plan to change for the second half of your project.

What are the challenges

What challenges or obstacles have you encountered? What will you do differently going forward? Please list these as short bullet points.

• Endemic disease swine flu hit entire south india in January to march 2015. Earlier we've planned outreach programs like meetings, awareness programs and edit-a-thons. But due to the above said disease people who promised to help in organizing programs didn't make it possible. Large gatherings also became impossible because people feared to be in crowd. Because of this situation I couldn't even make any travelling too.
• Historically Vijayanagaram & Srikakulam districts flourished with the educational institutions and libraries. Especially vijayanagaram maharajas developed many libraries and educational institutions. These libraries are known to be enriched with valuable books and manuscripts. I along with a wikipedians kvr lohit and Dr.Vandana Seshagiri Rao went to historically acclaimed libraries in vijayanagaram and srikakulam districts. But found that due to the negligence and some governance problems these libraries lost nearly 60-80% of books, and remaining small portion of books has been donated into govt. libraries. Even though I've used this trip to explore colleges and other institutional partnerships to telugu wiki projects and collected some valuable information, developed good articles. But to my exploration of historic private libraries and collecting their catalogs this trip resulted a set back. Taking permissions from authorities of Kathanilayam to publish their catalog in telugu wikipedia is the only relief in entire trip in terms of catalog works.

What is working well

What have you found works best so far? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.

• Dealing with authorities for institutional partnerships

Next steps and opportunities

What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your project? Please list these as short bullet points. If you're considering applying for a 6-month renewal of this IEG at the end of your project, please also mention this here.

• In second half of my project I would like to concentrate on digitising and publishing already taken catalogs in telugu wikipedia.
• I'm planning a kind of summer camp with newbies of telugu wiki community and going to make the catalogs digitized by them.
• Planning to involve more number of Wikimedians in all kinds of works of our project.
• Wanted to visit some more libraries and build partnerships in order to conduct workshops, edit-a-thons and make their catalogs and rare photos available in wikipedia.
• Create and develop articles regarding the libraries, their history, important people involved in development and establishment of libraries, history of public library movement in telugu, etc., in telugu wikipedia with the resources available during the visits.
• Exploring resources and capabilities of the institutions like libraries and other cultural associations that came forward to make partnership with us to enrich telugu wiki projects and other common projects such as wiki commons, etc., and trying my level best to use them in order to enrich above said wiki projects.

Grantee reflection

We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being an IEGrantee has been so far. What is one thing that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed from the past 3 months?

I'm excited to work hand on hand with eminent personalities of telugu literature, public library movement like velaga venkatappayya, Kalipatnam Ramarao, Lanka suryanarayana, Sannidhanam narasimhasharma, Musician Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna, People's doctor Dr.Vandani Seshagirirao, editor Modugula Ravikrishna and many others.