Meta:Wikisource:WikiProject Pothi

Pothi : A digitisation sprint for rare Odia-language books

Pothi (ପୋଥି) is a project to collect and digitise rare out-of-copyright Odia-language books from collectors, publishers, libraries and institutions, with a special focus on procuring sparsely available printed editions of ancient Odia literary creations.

1. Collection : Procuring rare books from collectors, publishers, libraries and institutions.
2. Scanning : Scanning procured books.
3. Digitisation : Re-typing books from scanned images while using OCR wherever possible.
4. Proofreading : Comparing typed editions with the scanned images to ensure a correct edition of the book.

Participating Users

• Project headed by Prateek Pattanaik (talk)
• Sailesh Patnaik (Talk|Contribs)
• Chinmayee Mishra (talk)

I will be doing this project with the suggestions and under the guidance of highly experienced Odia Wikimedians like Subhashish Panigrahi, Sailesh Patnaik, Jnanaranjan Sahu and Mrutyunjaya Kar. The plan has already been discussed on the Odia Wikipedia. The plan will be further discussed with all the members of the Odia Wiki Community in a physical setting soon.

Proposed Timeline

The plan is to undertake the project in short bursts throughout 2017. Please understand that collecting a considerable number of these books, especially from individual collectors takes a lot of work and time, and thus tends to be a slightly slower and unpredictable process.

S/N	Place	Date	Description	Source	Cumulative
1	Bhubaneswar	28-01-2017 and 29-01-2017	Scanning and collection sprint	Collectors	6 + 3(partial)
2	Cuttack	-	-	-
3	Puri	-	-	-
4	Koraput	-	-	-

Details

The books mentioned below are not under the copyright law because most of these creations are anywhere between 150-650 years old. The scanning and digitisation status of each book will be updated in the given spreadsheet.

List of books and contributors : Google Sheets

Updates

This thread and the Facebook page for the project will be constantly updated with the status of this project.

• Books scanned under Project Pothi will be categorised under Project Pothi on Commons. - Prateek Pattanaik (talk) 17:58, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

1. First Digitization Meetup (28-01-2017 and 29-01-2017, Bhubaneswar)

• First digitization meetup scheduled to be held on 28 January 2017.
• First Digitization Meet (28-01-2017 and 29-01-2017) :
  • Of the multiple books scanned, two were significantly older than the rest- A 1924 first edition of Jayadeba's Gita Govinda printed by the Singhadwar Press, Puri and a 1925 edition of 18th century Odia epic-poem Bidagdha Chintamani printed by the Prachi Samiti. Both of these books have been scanned.
  • Apart from these, Kapata Pasha, Nala Damayanti Banabasa, Rangasabha Suanga, Chata Ichhabati have been completely scanned and Banamali Padyabali, Bhanja Prabha, Bratabali have been partially scanned. The PDFs will be uploaded on Commons after rotation and editing asap and I'll link them above.
  • I demonstrated the scanning and digitisation process to all present Wikimedians in a session.
  • 25 Books have been listed for digitisation from various sources for digitising.
    • Notable among these is an old edition of the now unavailable Krushna Singha Mahabharata, an 18th century epic in Odia - the owner of the book, Lieutenant-Colonel Sibaram Satapathy, has assured us that he'd let us scan the book. He has also donated 7-8 of his own books to Wikisource.
    • Sarala Mahabharata, a 15th century Odia epic-poem, written by the first poet of Odia literature has been donated in its entirety by Sahadeb Sahoo in digital form, painstakingly edited by him. All of these books will be digitised in the next meet. The Google Sheets link has been updated with the complete description.
    • Nine rare books were procured from Dharmagrantha Store, Cuttack.

• Prateek Pattanaik (talk) 07:17, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

2. Storage and Maintainence of Procured Books

• The 9 Books that I had procured from Dharma Grantha Store, Cuttack are listed below. (The publisher sold them to me at a 25% discount for this project)
  • Tika Ramayana
  • Rasakallola
  • Rabana Ramayana
  • Bidagdha Chintamani
  • Bichitra Ramayana
  • Ananda Ramayana
  • Sadashiba Shri Ramalila
  • Ananga Narendra Shri Ramalila
  • Bilanka Ramayana
  • Total Price : INR 560
  • I have requested fellow members of the Odia Wikipedia Community at the Community Portal to suggest a suitable location for the storage and preservation of the books procured now (and any books that come to the community in the future) and to decide when these books will be scanned here.
  • Prateek Pattanaik (talk) 17:58, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

• • :@Titodutta: The bill has been sent to the Bengaluru office of CIS through speed post.
  • Prateek Pattanaik (talk) 17:42, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

3. Updates

• Two literature aficionados from Bhubaneswar, Mr. Vivekananda Dash and Mr. Satyanarayan Mishra had attended the first meetup to know more about the Digitisation process. They were so impressed by the project that they have been indirectly but actively supporting us by sourcing books from various sources so that we can scan them. :)
• The books Indurekha(19th c.), Prema Chintamani(18th c.) and Rasabaridhi(16th c.) have been collected from the aforesaid gentlemen and will be scanned by User:Chinmayee_Mishra.
• Mr. Sujit Panda from Kolkata, impressed by the work done under Pothi has sent digitised files of a few rare books in his personal collection, including folk literature like the Kandana Gitas by scanning them himself.
• Prateek Pattanaik (talk) 17:42, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
• Two very rare books by Prachi Samiti, one of the pioneer publishing houses of Odisha have been collected from Mr. Vivekananda Dash and Mr, Satyanarayan Mishra. These are part of a series called Chautisha Madhuchakra, an anthology of the rarest poems in Odia. This book is now being scanned by Chinmayee Mishra.
• A badly damaged early copy of Dinakrushna Dasa's Rasakallola has also been collected from the aforesaid gentlemen. Once scanned, this will complete the group of the five famous books in ancient Odia literature, four of which are already on the Odia Wikisource - with Bhanja's Baidehisha Bilasa, Abhimanyu's Bidagdha Chintamani, Biswanatha's Bichitra Ramayana and Bhakta Charana's Mathura Mangala. -Prateek Pattanaik (talk) 08:33, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
• I've started the process of importing about 10 books from oaob.nitrkl.ac.in into Odia Wikisource for transcription and transclusion. (All of these are out-of-copyright and the writings of ancient poets.) -Prateek Pattanaik (talk) 08:36, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Links

S/N	Link	Description
1	CIS-A2K Requests	Grant request to CIS-A2K
2	Project Pothi on Facebook	Facebook page to reach out to more people and with updates on the project
3	Odia Wikipedia Discussion Page	Discussion page on the Odia Wikipedia
4	List of books and contributors	Google Sheets
5	Scanned PDFs	'Project Pothi' category on commons
6	[Learning Pattern]	Digitising books with minimal apparatus

Endorsements

• Grant Request to CIS-A2K (See Endorsements section)
• Odia Wikipedia Community Portal (See ସମର୍ଥନ section)