User:Subodh (CIS-A2K)/Annual report 2022-2023

GLAM Partnerships edit

Partnerships with Marathi literary institutions in Hyderabad edit

In collaboration with Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir's (PNVM) digitisation team of 5 persons, we explored the rare and valuable resources at Hyderabad based organisations - 100 year old Marathi Granth Sangrahalay (MGS) and 70 year old Marathi Sahitya Parishad (MSP). After scrutiny of around 5000 books, we selected copyright free @1200 books (most of the books are published before 1930) which are rare. The digitisation of first batch of 200 books has been done. Marathi Sahitya Parishad is ready to relicense their 100+ publications and provide 50+ manuscripts (@10,000 pages) from Nizam era. The metadata of this repository is being prepared. The possibility of on site scanning of these old, fragile manuscripts is being explored.

O Bharat Digitisation project with partners in Goa edit

Bharatkar G. P. Hegde Desai's monument near Quepem, Goa

'Bharat'kar Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai, (7th Nov 1885 - 15th Aug 1949), a freedom fighter, a social reformer, a valiant journalist started 'Bharat' ('O Bharat' in Portuguese) a Marathi-Portuguese bilingual weekly, on 6th November 1912.

Goa Central library

Digitisation of O Bharat newspaper

The digitization project of O Bharat was completed through collaboration of different organizations. The trustees, Govind Hegde and Yatin Hegde of Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust initiated the project with technical and financial support from CIS-A2K. Marathi department of Goa University facilitated the identification and training process of local students involved in scanning of 12000 pages. The officials of Central Library cooperated in access to original volumes and in the process of digitisation. The trustees of Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust relicensed the two volumes of selected editorials published in 2018 and the whole O Bharat issues into CC-BY-SA 4.0.
On 75th Independence day, Chief Minister of Goa inaugurated the digitized volumes of 100 year old O Bharat newspaper and collection of selected editorial from O Bharat on Wikimedia Commons. The different media houses covered the event in the newspapers, the links are given below. The news mentions support of CIS-A2K and Wikimedia Foundation, the stakeholders worked in the project. The year wise volumes of O Bharat are being uploaded on Wikimedia Commons in O Bharat category.

Media links edit

Relicensed volume of editorials from O bharat
Front page of O Bharat in Portuguese
Front page of O Bharat in Marathi

Partnerships with Konkani language literary institutions, publishers and authors in Goa edit

After successful relicensing movement in Maharashtra, CIS-A2K has started working on this concept in Goa state in partnership with authors, copyright holders, academic institutes and language organisations. Meetings in Goa University library, Konkani department and Library Science department were conducted to understand the literary history. With the same objective, discussions were held in Goa Central library and with author, publisher & editor director of Gomantak media house, Raju Nayak. The discussions with active trustees of Konkani Bhasha Mandal (KBM) connected us to prominent people working for the Konkani language. KBM has expressed their readiness to facilitate the digitisation of PD books in Konkani.
First set of 20 books by first Jnanpith awardee author in Konkani, Ravindra kelekar was relicensed by his son Girish Kelekar. The digitisation was done by LeK Ladki Abhiyan's centre at Satara. The books are being uploaded in Category on Wikimedia Commons.

Konkani author Ravindra Kelekar's house, Priyol Goa
Display of artifacts, awards, photos at Konkani author Ravindra Kelekar's house, Priyol Goa
एका विचाराची जिवीत-कथा
पतझर में टूटी पत्तियाँ
ओथांबे

Launching of GLAM projects in Aurangabad edit

CIS-A2K has launched two new GLAM projects with institutional partners in Aurangabad. Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad Research and Training Organisation is involved in building archive on Sayajirao Gaekwad's life achievements and the valuable reference publications facilitated by him during 1870 to 1939. After creating the metadata and category structure, the first batch of 60 books in this archive was relicensed and uploaded here - Books published by Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad Sanshodhan and Prashikshan Sanstha.

Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada Institute Of Socio-Economic Research & National Integration established in 1972, holds an archive on Hyderabad Freedom Struggle. It contains old documents, newspapers, books and manuscripts. The Wikimedia session was conducted for the trustees of the institute.

Partnerships with GLAM institutions in Meghalaya edit

The knowledge about the North-East region of India is underrepresented on Wikimedia projects. Considering this, CIS-A2K has started building partnerships with the institutions in various states from the last two years. In 2022, the first project was launched in Arunachal Pradesh with local partner RIWATCH to document tribal culture and diversity on Wikimedia projects. CIS-A2K collaborated with West Bengal Wikimedians User Group (WBG) for this project. In February 2023, CIS-A2K in collaboration with Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama, Sohra, Meghalaya and West Bengal Wikimedians User Group (WBG) have started a project to jointly work on the "Digitization & Documentation of Cultural Heritage and Literature in Meghalaya". This pilot project is partially funded by "The North East Centre for Technology Application and Reach (NECTAR)". We organised several meetings and Wikimedia sessions with Ramakrishna Mission Sohra, 100 year old organisation working among the tribal communities and local organisations - Jeebon Roy Memorial Trust Library and Seng Khasi (Socio - Religio Organisation of Indigenous faith of Khasis, Niam Khasi) to develop a pilot project in collaboration with NECTAR, a special agency created for knowledge and technology dissemination in this underrepresented region. All the stakeholders have mutually agreed to collaboratively work on:

digital documentation of the rich cultural heritage in Khasi, Jaintia and Garo hills of Meghalaya state along with museum collections, art collections, books, manuscripts, audio files etc. produced or collected in different regions of the state,
online storage and display of the digitally documented products in the free and open-access platform of Wikimedia, and,
gradually building a stable long term partnership between the Wikimedia world and Ramakrishna Mission along with other local organisations to improve the quality content about Meghalaya on different Wikimedia projects with verifiable and reliable resources.

CIS-A2K representative Subodh Kulkarni and WBG representative Bodhisattwa Mandal visited Meghalaya during 21-27 February 2023 to launch the activities in the first phase of the project as below -

Digitisation of the repositories with the institutions - Jeebon Roy Memorial Trust Library, Seng Khasi (Organisation of Indigenous faith of Khasis, Niam Khasi) and Ramakrishna Ashrama Sohra.
Photo-video documentation: The list of historical monuments, heritage architecture and major tourist centres in the surrounding places will be prepared. The plan of photographic documentation will be prepared and executed by RK mission, local organisations, CIS-A2K & WBG.

Academy of Comparative Philosophy and Religion GLAM Project edit

The Academy of Comparative Philosophy & Religion (ACPR) was founded in 1952 as a Public Trust in the Educational & Research category at Belagavi in Karnataka state. The academy was conceived by philosopher, scholar and saint R. D. alias Gurudev Ranade way back in 1924 in Pune and started it's work. It was formally registered in 1952.
As the works of Gurudev Ranade are in public domain as per Indian Copyright law, the academy has planned to digitise the books published by them and others. The academy has approached CIS-A2K to facilitate the archive project on Gurudev Ranade, which will include works by Gurudev, works on Gurudev & his philosophy, images and audio-visuals.

The session to introduce Wikimedia projects and archive process to ACPR trustees and members was conducted at Lokmanya Granthalaya hall, Belagavi on 24 October between 11am to 1pm. In this session, elaborate demonstration of all Wikimedia projects was done. The discussion on copyright issues, relicensing procedure and organisational compliances was held. The basics of editing and uploading were also explained. Total 8 members participated in this session. The follow-up meeting to list all the publications, works and other documents was conducted on 30 November 2022 at ACPR, Belagavi. In the meeting with management members, the process of relicensing on Wikimedia projects was discussed in detail with some previous cases of some organisations. The works were compiled, listed and categorised. The metadata of all these works has been prepared in structured format and integrated with Wikidata.

CIS-A2K conducted training workshop and meetings on 28 April 2023 to launch the project with ACPR organisation. The meeting with secretary and trustees was conducted to finalise the resolutions, the Commons declarations for relicensing and metadata of all the publications. We also checked few scanning work previously done. The categorisation of books was done as per the priority for scanning.

We have placed CZur scanner at the ACPR library. The demonstration cum hands-on training session on scanning and processing was done with two staff members deputed by ACPR. The scanning set-up was done in proper room after checking the ventilation, light, cleanliness etc.

We are supporting them in the process regularly via video calls, Google meet and WhatsApp group. The team is enthusiastic and developed interest in the activity. As a result, as on today they have completed the scanning & processing of 12 books and successfully converted them into pdf file. The quality of work is improved a lot after the second book. We are planning to create small step by step video tutorials on all the aspects of scanning process. This will help to monitor and review the work remotely. The aspects to be covered are - setting up, scan process, post-processing, adding or inserting missing/incorrect pages, actions before compiling the final pdf, standardisation of the page size, batch process etc. We also trying to collaborate with some technical institute with this project for smooth operations, troubleshooting and expansion.

The inauguration was done on 6 June in a public ceremony at ACPR, Belagavi. As of now total 51 books and 35 media files have been uploaded under the following category -

The structured data of 60 books has been created in Wikidata and it is linked to all these files.

ACPR main building in Belagavi
Wikimedia orientation session of ACPR members by CIS-A2K
Sorting and listing of books in ACPR library, Belagavi
Digitisation team and setup at ACPR, Belagavi

Mula Mutha Nadi Darshan Photo Contest edit

CIS-A2K, in collaboration with Pune River Revival group has started Mula Mutha Nadi Darshan campaign cum photography contest on Wikimedia Commons from 15 May to 31 July. The aim of the contest is to document the Mula & Mutha rivers along with their tributaries in the Pune district on Wikimedia Commons in the form of images and videos. You can see more specific topics in the Rivers and topics section. In this campaign, partner organisations like, Jeevitnadi, Ecological Society, Samuchit Enviro Tech, Nisarg Sevak, National Society for Clean Cities etc. are actively participating.

According to the schedule mutually decided, the meetings were held to discuss the various aspects of this contest. All the organisers provided their valuable inputs to design the processes. The first workshop on Wikimedia Commons was conducted by CIS-A2K members on 12 May before launching the contest. The flyers and social media posts have been created. The video tutorials on Wikimedia Commons uploading process are uploaded. The awareness campaign with civil society organisations involved in river revival efforts, alert citizen groups, photography clubs, photography course institutions etc. is in progress. The portal on Wikimedia Commons has been developed with all necessary templates, categories etc. For more details visit - Commons:Mula Mutha Nadi Darshan 2023

Digitisation Programs edit

PNVM edit

Vigyan Ashram edit

Lek Ladki Abhiyan edit

Sr	Partner	Books	Pages
1	Bharatkar Pratishthan	27	12014
2	Lek Ladki Abhiyan	37	6379
3	Vigyan Ashram	35	6230
4	Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir	474	99966
5	Academy of Comparative Philosophy & Religion	51	9671
		624	134260

Relicensing activity edit

We have facilitated relicensing of total 419 books against the yearly target of 200.

Authors and copyright holders
1	Santosh Kakade	1
2	Ravindra Kelekar	20
3	Tara Bhawalkar	8
4	Bhanu Kale	4
5	Avinash Tilak	7
6	Sunilkumar Lawate	3
7	Anil Gore	6
8	Nagnath Nayakwadi	4
9	Vidyadhar Gokhale	11
10	Sayyad Amin	16
11	N. M. Joshi	9
12	Sanjay Gokhale	6
13	Anil Madake	1
14	Sunilkumar Lawate	1
15	Rajendra Singh	2
Organisations
1	Sayajirao Org	60
2	ACPR	260
	Total	419

Filmi datathon workshop edit

CIS-A2K conducted a Filmi datathon workshop on 16 October 2022 for Marathi volunteers who are interested in Marathi filmi songs and wish to contribute in Wikidata on the occasion of tenth birthday of Wikidata. As the data about Marathi songs is negligible in Wikidata, the volunteers have started compiling the data first on excel sheet from two resourceful websites. Total 8 volunteers attended the workshop to learn basics of Wikidata and Open Refine tool. The Wikidata expert and organiser of Filmi Datathon, Bodhisattwa guided in the session. Three volunteers with some technical background are learning Open Refine for exporting the data into Wikidata. A detailed session on Open Refine for technical people is also proposed.
After the workshop, in next 10 days, total 7 volunteers have collectively created metadata of 710 Marathi songs by exploring various websites on internet. The songs' items were created on Wikidata with the help of User:Bodhisattwa by running Open Refine tool.

Before the datathon, most film songs were of Bengali language
After the event with Marathi community, the Marathi songs increased significantly in numbers on Wikidata

Global collaborations edit

Wikibase projects with Wikimedia Deutshland edit

CIS-A2K has started GLAM project with partner organisation, Academy of Comparative Philosophy and Religion, Belagavi, Karnataka. The digitisation of books is in progress at ACPR. The metadata of all the publications has been prepared and included in Wikidata. As the members of ACPR are interested in connecting their knowledge repository and data with the wider global community of scholars, researchers and enthusiasts, the idea of Wikibase project was introduced. The discussion was started with Wikimedia Deutschland regarding this potential collaboration few months back. An introductory session on Wikidata and Wikibase was conducted by Bodhisattwa Mandal, WMDE's Partner Manager for promoting Wikibase in India. The session was attended by 14 members of ACPR. The session was conducted on 17 June 2023.

Lingua Libre project with Wikimedia France edit

During the pandemic times, CIS-A2K collaborated with Marathi volunteers on Lingua Libre project to develop language resource on Wikimedia Commons. About 25 volunteers worked collectively to upload 15224 recordings on Wikimedia Commons. Thus the potential of this project to document and preserve the languages was realised. Many organisations working in tribal areas with communities speaking local languages have approached us to participate in this project.
CIS-A2K representative discussed the possibilities for collaboration with Wikimedia France members in the recent Wikimedia Summit. Taking the process further, a meeting was organised on 11 October 2022 with Lingua Libre coordinator and Head of Diversity and Francophony Project, Adelaide Calais. The discussion points included - preservation of endangered languages in India, Integration of recordings with Wikidata, connecting languages and language learning module development. We explored possibilities with the organisations working on Korku, Idu Mishmi and Gondi languages. The preliminary meetings and exchange of database was done. The documentation process design is in progress.