Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Dr. Bir/Bihar Bengalee Association GLAM (ID: 21974356)

statusFunded
Dr. Bir/Bihar Bengalee Association GLAM
proposed start date2022-11-01
proposed end date2023-10-31
grant start date2022-11-01T00:00:00Z
grant end date2024-04-30T00:00:00Z
budget (local currency)335000 INR
budget (USD)4122.78 USD
amount recommended (USD)4122.78
grant typeIndividual
funding regionSA
decision fiscal year2022-23
applicant• Dr. Bir
organization (if applicable)• N/A
Review Final Report

This is an automatically generated Meta-Wiki page. The page was copied from Fluxx, the grantmaking web service of Wikimedia Foundation where the user has submitted their application. Please do not make any changes to this page because all changes will be removed after the next update. Use the discussion page for your feedback. The page was created by CR-FluxxBot.

Applicant Details edit

Please provide your main Wikimedia Username.

Dr. Bir

Please provide the Usernames of people related to this proposal.

-

Organization

N/A

Are you a member of any Wikimedia affiliate or group, including informal groups like Wiki Fan Clubs, emerging language communities, not recognized Wikimedia groups etc.? Please list them all.

West Bengal Wikimedians User Group.

Grant Proposal edit

M. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.

Dr. Bir/Bihar Bengalee Association GLAM

Q. Indicate if it is a local, international, or regional proposal and if it involves several countries? (optional)

Local

Q2. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.


R. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has.


1. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important.
 
Few volumes of Behar Herald

This is a proposal to initiate a GLAM partnership with the Patna branch of Bihar Bengalee Association, an organization based in the Indian state of Bihar. The organization was created on 7th April, 1938 during the British colonial rule to protect the rights and preserve the language and culture of the Bengali speaking population residing in Bihar. Among its many activities, this organization took the responsibility of publishing the oldest English weekly published from Bihar named Behar Herald in 1938, which started its journey in 1875. Even if the journey of the newspaper was not very smooth due to lack of resources, the quality of its reporting was held in high esteem, with frequent publications of articles from renowned personalities from all over the country.

Sadly, not much effort has been taken to digitize the newspaper. There has been some progress made by Center for Research Libraries, which has digitized some of its early issues and which can be accessed through CRL's Digital Delivery System, but a large portion is still not touched. As I was keen to have these huge resources digitized to preserve, I was in contact and was negotiating with the organization for years and got their approval to digitize their collection. Recently, two of us visited the organization on behalf of the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group to assess the amount of work and chalk out the workflow. We have sadly noticed that these extremely valuable resources are in extremely dire condition without any maintenance due to lack of resources, many of them are spread out on the floors in dirt. We painstakingly cataloged the available physical copies in dust and met with the organization authorities to discuss logistics and workflow of the digitization.

2. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.
 
Cataloging of Behar Herald was being done on our preparatory visit

To execute the GLAM project, we will purchase a suitable scanner and install it at the office of the organization, train a person to use the scanner who will digitize and post-process the documents, reimburse the person for his/her time and effort and upload the processed digitized documents on Wikimedia Commons. In short, we will initiate a Wikimedian-in-residence (WiR) program at the organization. The GLAM organization will provide some logistical support to the WiR like computers and lodging for free.

3. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?

The main activities will be as follows:

  • Purchase of scanner: We are currently preferring CZUR Professional Document ET18-P Fast Recognition Scanner which is being used in different Wikimedia GLAM projects in India. The scanner will be kept under the supervision of the GLAM organization during the GLAM project and will later be re-used in other GLAM projects by us in future.
  • Training of WiR: A person competent to digitize and post-process the documents with care will be actively searched, trained to use the scanner as well as to upload the digitized documents to Wikimedia Commons and assigned for the task as WiR. The activities of the WiR will be regularly monitored by the GLAM organization officials and by us. Remunerations will be provided by us from this grant for the time and effort of the WiR.
  • Use on Wikimedia sites: The digitized documents will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and will be made ready to be transcribed and proofread by Wikisource volunteers. Eventually, the texts will be used as reference materials for relevant Wikipedia articles and data will be generated on Wikidata.
4. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign or event? If so, please select the relevant campaign below. If so, please select all the relevant campaigns from the list below. If "other", please state which.

Other

GLAM
5. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?

I am in close contact with the GLAM organization i.e. the Bihar Bengalee Association, the members of which will help me search for the WiR and will provide some necessary logistics to the WiR. I am also communicating with the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group, who will be providing necessary guidance, resources and technical support to execute the project. We have made our first field visit together to assess the content, create catalog and design workflow.

6. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Other global topics for impact (topics considered to be of global importance)

6.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.

Behar Herald was a leading English weekly newspaper which was locally, nationally and internationally relevant. If digitized, it would provide us with huge resources to cite for different Wikipedia articles related to different relevant subjects. As the local history of Bihar, among many other topics published in the newspaper, is mostly under-represented on Wikimedia, these articles can be used as citations and generate new contents, thus bridging the knowledge gap on the subject.

7. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.

Culture, heritage or GLAM

8. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities?

Geographic

9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities?

We will target mainly the English Wikisource community who will be transcribing and proofreading the volumes over time. After uploading the digitized versions of the newspaper on Wikimedia Commons, we will create index pages of those works, so that the English Wikisource community can take up the work. We would also like to stress, our activities are mainly focused on digitization only and the community takeover will happen in due course, most probably after the grant period ends.

10. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants?

We will be operating with the technical support from the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group and we will strictly follow the Code of Conduct adopted by the user group back in 2018, which aims to ensure friendly interaction and non-discriminatory environment for all the participants.

11. Please tell us about how you have let your Wikimedia communities know about the planned activities and this proposal. Use this space to describe the processes you carried out to make the community more involved in planning this proposal. Please link the on-wiki community discussion(s) around the proposals.

I have notified relevant communities about this proposal as below -

  • Indian Wikimedia community mailing list-   Done
  • West Bengal Wikimedia community mailing list -   Done
  • West Bengal Wikimedians User Group meta talk page-   Done
12. Are you aware of other Rapid Fund proposals in your local group, community, or region that are being submitted and that align with your proposed project?

No

If yes:

12.1 Did you explore the possibility of doing a joint proposal with other leaders in your group?
N/A
12.2 How will this joint proposal allow you to have better results?
N/A
13. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedia partners to implement this proposal? Required.

Yes

13.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.
 
Meeting with Bihar Bengali association to plan the project workflow

This proposal intends to collaborate with Bihar Bengalee Association who will be the GLAM partner for this project and are the publisher of the Behar Herald newspaper, which we are interested in digitizing. Apart from providing with the physical copies of the newspaper for the digitization, the organization will help us search a suitable WiR, provide some of the logistical support to the WiR like computers and lodging, take care of the scanner during the GLAM project and monitor the digitization activities of the WiR.

14. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of THREE options that most apply.

Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Coordinate Across Stakeholders, Identify Topics for Impact

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation edit

15. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?

Through this fund proposal, I will have the opportunity to coordinate a Wikimedia GLAM project for the first time. Although I will have the experience from my academic background as a faculty of a college in West Bengal, have certificate on Digital Humanities from Harvard University and the technical guidance of the user group members, I am sure, there will be some mistakes from my side while executing the project, but I am also confident that I will learn from my shortcomings and evolve the project in a better way. I have plans for other potential GLAM projects in the future, which will be planned and executed in a better way using the experience gained from this project.

16. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following spaces provided.
Main Open Metrics Data
Main Open Metrics Description Target
Number of pages to be digitized This is an approximate number measured during cataloging of BEHAR HERLAD 45000
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
17. Core quantitative metrics.
Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target
Number of participants *Wikimedian-in-Residence:1
  • Bihar Bengalee Association :2
  • West Bengal Wikimedians User Group :1
  • Grantee:1
5
Number of editors *Wikimedian-in-Residence:1
  • West Bengal Wikimedians User Group :1
  • Grantee:1
3
Number of organizers *Bihar Bengalee Association :1
  • West Bengal Wikimedians User Group :1
  • Grantee:1
3
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target
Wikimedia Commons Approximate number of Uploaded pages. 45000
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
17.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.


18. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support.

We will not use any online tool to measure any metrics mentioned above.

Financial Proposal edit

19. & 19.1 What is the amount you are requesting from Wikimedia Foundation? Please provide this amount in your local currency.

335000 INR

19.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?

4122.78 USD

20. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.
# Category Item description No. of units Cost per unit

(INR)

Total cost

(INR)

Total cost

(USD)

Notes
1 Logistics Purchase of Scanner
50,000
615.34
Might vary depending on situation.
2 Other hardware like External Hard Drives, Data cables etc.
20,000
246.14
3 Internet package
5,000
61.53
4 Travel, Food and Lodging for 2-members volunteers resource team
60,000
738.41
Total 135,000 1,661.42
5 Renumeration Assignment of Wikimedian-in-residence 12 months
150,000
492.27
Might vary depending on situation.
Total 150,000 492.27
6 Miscellaneous
50,000
615.34
Any other unforeseen expenditure
Total 50,000 615.34
Grand Total 335,000 4,122.78
We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

Endorsements and Feedback edit

Please add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.

Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:

  • Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
  • Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
  • Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
  • Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
  • Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).

Endorse