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User:Subodh (CIS-A2K)/Final progress report Jan 2020

< User:Subodh (CIS-A2K)

Background edit

The Centre for Internet & Society is a non-profit organisation in India. CIS's official website may be seen at cis-india.org. There are several teams working in CIS such as accessibility, openness, internet governance, telecom, research. Annual reports of the Centre for Internet and Society may be seen here.

The Access to Knowledge (or A2K) team of the organisation is dedicated to supporting and serving Indian Wikimedia projects and the communities. CIS-A2K's primary objectives are:

 
CIS-A2K strategic plan 2018–2020 outline. Please read the plan here.
  • supporting and serving the Indian Wikimedia communities in all possible ways
  • building institutional partnerships.
  • bringing more content under free license
  • designing and executing projects with community participation.
  • strengthening the Wikimedia volunteers.
  • fostering and enabling an appropriate legal and technological ecosystem.

At the beginning of 2018, we prepared CIS-A2K "Strategic plan" for 2018–2020 (you may also see CIS-A2K's "Strategic plan" for 2016–2018). In that plan, we proposed to work in the following area:

  • Content Enrichment: A2K aims to work towards defining and developing strategies that embody the values of NPOV, Verifiability and is of help to readers
  • Sustainable Partnerships: A2K team would like to establish partnerships with educational and research institutions and developmental organisations which will provide anchor, leadership and support for the Wikimedia movement in the Indian subcontinent.
  • Creating inclusive movement practices: A2K would like to play a lead role in creating inclusive spaces for all contributors celebrating diversity.

In March 2019, we submitted our annual work plan and proposal form. On 31 December 2019 we completed the first 6 months of the grant period and here in this "progress report", we are reporting our progress. In this "progress report" we'll focus on the major Wiki-events activities we conducted or supported in this period, and also our learning, and future plans.

In the last 6 months CIS-A2K has conducted and/or supported a good number of Wiki-events/activities. In the following table we are including some of the events conducted or supported in these 6 months, we feel were important and impactful for the communities and the movement:

Content Enrichment edit

Re-licensing sessions edit

  What?
CIS-A2K is collaborating with various authors and organisations willing to re-license their content under CC-By-SA. A2K is facilitating the OTRS process in Wikimedia Commons for re-licensing as well as digitisation of the content. The team of trained Wikimedians at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, District Pune has been digitising the books and doing uploads in Wikimedia projects.

  Why?
The old reference books are not being re-printed now. There are few copies with some libraries. The organisations also have knowledge repositories in the form of training booklets and posters.Therefore to make this hidden knowledge accessible to the society, this content needs to be published in free knowledge sources like Wikimedia Commons & Wikisource. For this, re-licensing sessions with organisations and copyright holders are conducted regularly.

  When and where?
The sessions were conducted on 6, 12, & 31 July and 31 December 2019 in Pune.

  How?

  • CIS-A2K facilitated the OTRS process of three organisations, Jnana Prabodhini, Saptahik Vivek Hindustan Prakashan Sanstha and Vrikshamitra. They have released their six books, eight volumes of encyclopedias and 12 books respectively. The authorised signatory of the organisation has completed the OTRS process. The simple 'How to do' manual was developed for this. The books are uploaded in respective categories here.
 
Re-licensing session with Ila Dalwai (on the left)
  • CIS-A2K conducted four sessions with copyright holders. In the field of rural development in Maharashtra, thoughts of Late S. G. Majgaonkar are highly regarded. His son Dhananjay Majgaonkar who holds the copyright for his books, completed the OTRS process and released three books in CC-By-SA. The books are now on Commons as well as Wikisource project.

OTRS session was conducted with Ila Dalwai, daughter of social reformer & writer Late Hamid Dalwai. She has re-licensed Meharunnisa Dalwai and Hamid Dalwai's four books. The content donation sessions with thinker & writer Hari Narake and son of Marathi thinker & writer Late Narahar Kurundkar were conducted. These persons handed over 15 books to CIS-A2K for further process.

Learning
The procedure of OTRS with the organisations need more attention and time as it involves trustee resolutions, declarations on official letterhead etc. The authors or copyright holders are not familiar with computer or internet. Therefore, it is preferable to conduct one to one personal sessions to complete the process.

Follow-up
Due to this re-licensing, the other organisations and authors/copyright holders have been approaching us for content donation. Therefore we are planning to develop one more set-up for scanning. The training of active Wikimedians to execute OTRS process is also planned.

Links

It would be great fun to read the old classic and out of print books, was my first thought when Mr Subodh Kulkarni introduced me to Wikisource. Being an avid book lover it was worth giving a try. It turned out to be true as some wikisource books which I read were almost 100 years old while some recent but all were interesting and informative. Then One day I accompanied with Mr Kulkarni to a workshop at Vidnyan Ashram, Pabal and learned about the process of scanning, indexing and making of PDF of books. The further process of proofreading, typography and validation required careful reading of the book word by word. So it was not just joy of reading but also enjoying the other aspect of the book like the use of different words, different style of writing suited to those times. The experience was becoming pleasurable so it was imperative that I attend an advanced workshop in Pune in Oct 2019. That was my first training workshop and It involved using advanced templates, library classification, use of wikidata and transclusion. At the end of the training, I could say that I have learned a lot. I am using the knowledge gained during the training now in editing more books and enjoying the work. - Username:Svnavare

GLAM activities edit

Digitisation project with Rajgurunagar Public Library edit

  What?
A meeting was conducted to start the digitisation project with Rajgurunagar Public Library at Rajgurunagar in Pune district. The detailed discussion on the different stages of the project was done before launching of the activities. The review meeting was held at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal.

  When and where?
A visit to Public Library at Rajgurunagar was made with Secretary of library, Vigyan Ashram team and A2K Programme Officer on 29 November 2019.

  Why?
Rajgurunagar Public Library was established in 1862. It houses very rare old books. We facilitated the digitisation project proposal sanction process to be completed with State Language Department. This is the first such initiative in Maharashtra. This will give impetus to other libraries across the state. Three other 100+ year old libraries have already contacted us to take up such project.

  How?
Initial meeting with key persons of library was conducted at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal in August 2019. They were introduced to the whole process from creation of metadata, scanning, uploading, OCR etc. at Vigyan Ashram. After the approval from the management the proposal for digitisation of rare books published in 19th century and uploading the content on Wikimedia was developed. The proposal was submitted to Maharashtra State Language Department. The scanning of 25 rare books is completed. The review of progress was taken by library representatives and A2K on 29 November at Vigyan Ashram.

Learning
The rare old books are in bad condition. There is a need to take up appropriate preservation activities before scanning. The catalogs of the libraries are not available in Unicode. The training on Metadata and KOHA is required.

Follow-up
The uploading on Wikimedia Commons and OCR on Wikisource will be done in next two months. The next project of digitising copyright free reference books was discussed with key persons in library at Rajgurunagar.

This year, I participated in Project Tiger 2.0 and created 16 articles in the three months period. Collecting information from online and off-line sources and researching for the articles was enriching experience. Such competitions motivate the editors to dedicate time for Wikipedia, which otherwise is difficult considering our busy schedules and professional work commitments.

I made two visits under GLAM project. Visit to Joshi railway museum, Pune made me understand the challenges and problems faced by the privately run museums. During another GLAM visit to Apte Vachan Mandir, 150 year old public library in my home town of Ichalkaranji, I understood the need of digitization of books and resolved basic queries of the board of directors about this process. If we can digitize rare books from this treasure trove in this year, it will really give me satisfaction as a Wikipedian. - Username:ज्ञानदा गद्रे-फडके

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    Building of Rajgurunagar Public Library
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    Accessible open shelves for readers
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    Collection in the library

Shetkari Sanghatana & Sharad Joshi Archive Project edit

  What?
Sharad Joshi was farmers' leader, thinker, politician, writer and founder of Shetkari Sanghatana (Farmers' Organisation) in India. Shetkari Sanghatana & Sharad Joshi Wikimedia archive project launching event was conducted with Secretary of the Trust and three other members.

  Why?
Sharad Joshi has transferred all rights of his literature & archive of Shetkari Sangatana to Secretary of Shetkari Trust. It contains 25+ books in Marathi, English & Hindi, monthly magazines of 20 years, photographs and video films. To document all this as archive on Wikimedia, the proper digitisation, re-licensing and uploading process was developed.

  When and where?
A meeting was held at Village Ambethan in Pune district on 11-12 December 2019. Total five members participated in the meeting.

  How?
An initial meeting regarding procedure of re-licensing was held at Pabal with the trustees on 28 November. Then the trust agreed to re-license all these contents. This occasion was selected to launch the project because 12 December is death anniversary of Sharad Joshi. The participants were introduced to Wikimedia projects initially. The copyright issues and different licenses were discussed. The content was studied and then sorted into different categories. The category trees for both archives were created. The listing of books, manuscripts, reports, audios and videos has been started. The initial draft of the proposed MoU between Shetkari Trust & CIS-A2K has been prepared in Marathi.

Learning
In the case of non-profit trusts, proper administrative procedures are to be followed before re-licensing process in Wikimedia Commons. This task takes more time and coordination.

Follow-up
The MoU will be finalised in February 2020. The digitisation of the content and the training of some volunteers is planned from February onwards.

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    Archive project planning meeting
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    Notes during Sharad Joshi Archive project planning
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    Notes during Sharad Joshi Archive project planning

Digitisation in Punjab edit

  What?
CIS-A2K in collaboration with Punjabi Wikimedians initiated a content enrichment program and started scanning & uploading rare books from different sources. Very few books are available on the web in Gurmukhi script under the free licenses. So, the initiative was taken to build Punjabi language.

  How?
Total 27 books have been scanned and uploaded between the period - June to December 2019. These books can be seen in this category. These books were uploaded with book template on Wikimedia Commons and index pages were also created on Punjabi Wikisource.

Learning
Digitization Capacity Building Program needs to be continued as there is more work to be digitized.

Follow-up
To continue content enrichment program, CIS-A2K will scan and re-license 35 more books on Wikimedia Commons by the end of June 2020.

Photo-documentation activities edit

Floods on Wiki edit

  What?
Dalit Mahila Vikas Mandal is an active organisation working on Women's issues in Maharashtra. The organisation is working in flood affected areas from August 2019. It was active in flood relief works also. During the work, the activists have documented the flood in Sangli, Satara & Kolhapur districts. A Wikimedia Commons workshop was organised to upload this media in Wikimedia projects.

  Why?
The media about the natural calamities is captured during the incidence. It is used in press reporting and on social media for few days. It is not archived afterwards. Hence there is a need to document these events systematically in Wikimedia projects.

  When and where?
A Wikimedia Commons workshop was conducted on 23 November 2019 at Dalit Mahila Vikas Mandal, Satara in which five activists participated.

  How?
The participants were introduced to Wikimedia Commons project initially. The copyright issues and different licenses were discussed. The category tree for floods in the three districts were created. Then the images of flood were sorted into different categories. One of the participants has started uploading the images into these categories.

Learnings
The category trees for the local issues and localities are not created in Wikimedia Commons. The pre-work on this is required before uploading.

Follow-up
The follow-up sessions are planned to upload more media. The concept will be expanded to other organisations working on flood relief, photographers and journalists.

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    House flooded in village Herwad
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    Village person in his destroyed house

Photo-walk in Pune edit

  What?
A photo-walk was organised to capture the images of historic monument - Shaniwar Wada and coppersmith community in Tambat Aali area of Pune city.

  Why?
The images add value to the articles. The details of the monuments are necessary for reading between the lines of history. Many hidden facts could be explored through capturing the minute parts of any structure. It is very urgent to preserve and document the traditional craft communities across India. The copper-craft is such unique tradition in Pune.

  When and where?
A photo-walk to document the historic monument - Shaniwar Wada and coppersmith community in Tambat Aali was organised on 19 December 2020 in Pune with two Marathi Wikimedians, User:आर्या जोशी and User:कल्याणी कोतकर.

  How?
The categories related to the two places were studied in the beginning. The historic monument, Shaniwar Wada has many images on the Commons. Therefore some missing details of the images and parts of the monument were identified. Then the pictures were taken in the next one hour. The next place was "Tambat Aali", means lane of traditional families involved in copper-craft. In this one hour photo-walk we interacted with the persons working on the job as well as senior craftsmen to understand the process. The skills and techniques involved in the process were documented in this photo-walk. After this photo-walk, the images were sorted and renamed. This session on categorisation and uploading continued for next two hours.

Learnings
The map of monument area depicting the image capturing places needs to be prepared before photo-walk. The work is to be properly divided between the participants. The survey of community should be done to identify the special features of process.

Follow-up
Two more photo-walks with pottery community and one monument are planned in next two quarters.

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    Copper craftsman at work
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    Statue of Bajirao Peshawa in Shaniwar Wada

Photowalk in Patiala edit

  What?
Images are an important part of Wikipedia articles. There are articles on Wikipedia which don't have images but images can describe those articles in a better way. To fill this gap, CIS-A2K conducted a Photowalk for Punjabi Wikimedians as part of Wiki Loves Monuments in India 2019 in Patiala city on 15 September 2019.

  How?
Total four members participated in this Photowalk. A list of the monuments was prepared before the day of Photowalk and the route was planned accordingly. There are state-protected monuments in Patiala city and they don't have media files on Wikimedia projects and even on the other websites. There are 10 historical gates in Patiala and only four of them are state-protected monuments. Participants captured images of these four gates - Sirhindi, Samania, Darshni Gate and Sunami Gate. A photo of Samania Gate by Satdeep Gill won the 9th price in Wiki Loves Monuments in India 2019.

Learning
During the renovation of monuments, changes are being made in original design. Hence such documentation is necessary and urgent.

Follow-up

  • CIS-A2K will conduct one event to add these files or other photos of Punjab to related Wikipedia articles, before June 2020. It is needed because there is data about Punjab that exists on Commons but not added to Wikipedia articles.
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    Samania Gate
  •  
    Sunami Gate

Skill Development edit

Intensive Personalised Wiki Training sessions edit

  What:
An Intensive Personalised Wiki Training (IPWT) sessions were conducted for Marathi Wikimedians and Student community at Alva's college.

  Why:
Intensive Personalised Training Programme is a project where CIS-A2K attempts to provide focused training to individuals based on their need to enhance the skill-set in contributing to the Wikimedia projects.

  How?
On 15 October 2019 & 18 December 2019 the IPWT sessions were conducted in Pune & on 13 December 2019, the training session was conducted at Alva's college, Mangalore.

Learning: The IPWT sessions will increase the confidence of the participants as they dedicated support and attention.

Follow-up: For the Marathi Wikimedians, a follow-up session has been conducted and for the student community at Alva's college the follow-up session will be conducted in April.

IPWT session was more about Advanced training which is very helpful to contribute to Wikimedia projects and also as a student it is essential to learn these tools and skill-sets. The very new thing that we learnt such as lingua libre, java scripts on Wikipedia and Udemy free learning which was very helpful. Thank you for such training - from User:Yakshitha

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    IPWT session in progress
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    Participants learning new tools

Certificate course at Christ (Deemed to be University) edit

  What:
To enhance the knowledge of the students in contributing to Wikimedia projects, a certificate course was conducted by CIS-A2K for the UG students of the Christ (Deemed to be University).

  Why:
This course has helped the students to improve their knowledge and skills in contributing to the Wikimedia projects in their vernacular languages. This course is conducted after normal working hours, for 45 hours, and carries two credits for the academic records. In the last six months, 30 students enrolled for this course in Malayalam, Kannada, Hindi, Tamil and Sanskrit languages.

  How?
A course plan was designed with the help of the needs and assessments of the students and it was made sure that the students could acquire skills in using and working with Wikipedia. This course has three major components:

  • Introduction to Wikipedia, which incorporates the history of online encyclopedias and Wikipedia itself, using sources, choosing and drafting articles and moving articles to the main space.
  • How to edit and publish articles. Here, common templates, editing and wikification of articles, adding content such as tables and references, legal aspects, policies and guidelines, tackling vandalism and tools for producing illustrations are dealt with.
  • Wikipedia’s reliability and social significance. Under this component, Wikipedia is discussed in a critical and evaluative manner, where matters such as its ethics, existence as a social community, existence as a democratic project, use by students, teachers librarians and journalists, criticisms and measures to improve its quality come under the purview.

Learning:
Selection of the students should be made properly at the beginning of the classes. This helps to retain the momentum of the class.

Follow-up:
These sort of certificate courses will be conducted in the upcoming semester also.

Wiki Advanced Training 2019 edit

  What?
CIS-A2K conducted the first Wiki Advanced Training on Wikisource to enhance the skills of Indian language Wikisource contributors. This was a 3-days workshop where advanced topics related to Wikisource were discussed.

  Why?
From Year 2016, after integration of Google OCR, the Indic Wikisource projects have seen growth in activities across India. So it was right time to consolidate the progress with the community members and enhance the skills according to the specific needs of the projects.

  When and where?
Wiki Advanced Training 2019 was conducted in association with Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics at Pune, on 11–13 October 2019. Total 21 Wiki-librarians participated in this event. 7 of the participants were female and 14 were male.

  How?

 
Wikimedia Commons has more media related to:
  • 1st Day: During the WAT some of the topics discussed were: Basic workflow of Wikisource, OCR process, layout with typography, Wikisource tools such as IA-Upload, Vicuna Uploader, URL2Commons, Fill index Gadget etc., advance proofreading templates and transclusion.
  • 2nd day: Proofreadathon/Transclusionathon was done with the participants along with a session on Library Classification for Wikisource and role of Wikidata for Wikisource.
  • 3rd day: Scanning demo by participants from Vigyan Ashram and the scanning process of Internet Archive.org with respect to Kannada Wikisource.

The way the detailed workflow for an indic language wikisource was narrated, with the comparative demonstrations was the most helpful part for me. I genuinely appreciate the efforts of the organizers and the host institute, for this event. - User:Chinmayee Mishra

Learning
Small, focused and dedicated participants helped to achieve a better outcome for such technical events.

Follow-up
For impact, we will conduct few workshops in different cities of India.

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    Language-wise group activity
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    Group photo of the participants
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    Scanning demonstration

Wikisource and Wikidata training for Sanskrit Wikimedians edit

 
Participants of Wikisource and Wikidata training for Sanskrit Wikimedians

  What?
A 2-day workshop was conducted on Wikisource and Wikidata for Sanskrit Wikimedians.

  Why?
Sanskrit Wikisource has a lot of potential to become a resourceful website, but still it has not seen much growth. The aim of the workshop was to bring the community to the same page with other Indic Wikisource projects and train the participants to work more efficiently for the projects.

  When and where?
The workshop happened from 30 November 2019 to 01 December 2019 at Aksharam, Samskrita Bharati, Bengaluru.

  How?
One day each was allotted for Wikisource and Wikidata. On the first day, copyright of books along with upload, OCR and other tools were discussed extensively. On the second day, the main focus was to learn Wikidata with relation to Wikisource. To do that, the basics of Wikidata, WikiProject Books specially FRBR modelling of books, SPARQL query etc., were discussed. Both the days there were hands-on sessions. CIS-A2K supported the event by sending resource persons who conducted the workshops.

Wikidata Skillshare edit

  What?
Wikidata skillshare is an reactive and budget-friendly initiative started by CIS-A2K to share skills and knowledge about Wikidata among community members.

  Why?
Skillshare initiative was started as a easy entry point for new and experienced users who want to learn something new, improve their skills or solve some issues.

  When and where?
Started on July 19, 2019 and online/offline as suitable.

  How?
Wikidata contributors who require some specific skill or knowledge can request in the project page as an individual or as a group. People who have the knowledge or skill can respond to their requests and conduct an online or offline session as per feasibility. CIS-A2K personnels facilitate and arrange for the meetings as required. The initiative aims to reach to as many as contributors in a budget-friendly way so that the donation money could be utilized optimally. Till now, 4 offline and 4 online sessions have been conducted in response to requests from 2 female and 3 male editors as individuals.

Partnerships edit

Collaboration with PAH Solapur University edit

  What?
The meeting with PAH Solapur University, Solapur (PAHSUS) Vice Chancellor, Registrar, Head of the departments, faculty and administrative staff was held to finalise the terms of collaboration in MoU, operational framework and action plan for the next two academic years. After the meeting, orientation programme and Wikipedia workshop for the selected students and faculty was organised.

  Why?
The knowledge creation process in Wikimedia projects enhance the digital skills and research attitude of the students. It also introduces them to wider free knowledge repositories on internet. The projects are also enriched by locally relevant knowledge.

  When and where?
The events were conducted in PAH Solapur University, Solapur (PAHSUS) on 18 & 19 July 2019.

  How?
The various aspects of collaboration were finalised by the core team and A2K team. The action plan according to the needs-assessment of the students, and the core team’s analysis was developed. Some highlights of the proposed action plan are -

  • Each department will facilitate creation of Wikipedia articles related to their course by the students. The articles will be created on user sandbox or on Google Docs before moving to Wikipedia mainspace.
  • The projects on museum, library and archives will be planned for enriching content on Wikimedia Commons and other sister projects after analysing encyclopedic value of the content.
  • PAHSUS will involve other affiliated colleges in free knowledge creation and the Wikimedia movement.
  • The digitisation of copyright free books in the library will be taken up for increasing Wikisource content.

Learning
The students are interested in creating online content and get enriched by exploring the web knowledge repositories like Internet Archive, Google books etc. There is difficulty in planning the regular events due to academic time-table constraints.

Follow-up
The articles were reviewed in December session. The uploading of articles in main namespace and GLAM activities are planned from January-April.

"After starting work with CIS-A2K at our university, the students and faculty are benefiting through knowledge creation/sharing activity in Wikimedia projects. They became aware about other Wikimedia projects apart from Wikipedia. Our students actively participated in Freedom Struggle edit-a-thon and created more than 50 articles on Marathi newspapers and editors during the period. We are hopeful that we will be able to extend this activity involving more affiliated colleges in future." - Vice-Chancellor Dr. Mrunalini Phadnavis, PAH Solapur University

Collaboration with Vigyan Ashram edit

  What?
The two day meeting of A2K representatives and Vigyan Ashram Wiki team was conducted to review the work done in the last two years and design action plan for the next year. This collaboration culminated into signing of official MoU between both the parties.

  Why?
Vigyan Ashram aims to achieve ‘Development through the education system’. It aims to integrate development activities with life skills training. VA is engaged in training rural youth in rural technologies. VA is generating content on rural technologies and promoting it through its website. VA thinks that Wikimedia platforms will be appropriate for dissemination of the content generated through their work. Therefore they have been training students on creating content in Wikimedia projects with the support of CIS-A2K since 2017.

  When and where?
The review meeting and MoU signing was done with key persons of Vigyan Ashram at Pune on 26 & 27 December 2019.

  How?
The meeting started with review of the work done at Vigyan Ashram in the last two years. The Wiki co-ordinator Pooja Jadhav and कोमल संभुदास presented the statistics of Wikipedia articles, Commons uploads and Wikisource work. The scanning details were also discussed. Then Director, Yogesh Kulkarni explained the plan of Vigyan Ashram regarding free knowledge creation and how Wiki projects can be integrated with the training methodology in practice. The working on MoU draft followed after this. Both the institutions worked on the roles & responsibilities to finalise the terms of Mou.

Learning
The partnerships with the organisations working for empowerment of local communities is helpful as the objectives are similar.

Follow-up
Both the institutions will work together to execute the action plan chalked out in the MoU. These include scanning of books, thematic workshops and OER development.

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    Review and action plan making
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    MoU copy
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    MoU signed for collaboration

Collaboration with Alva's college edit

In 2016 CIS-A2K started working with Alva's college to steward the growth of Kannada Wikipedia and to make available free knowledge in Kannada to all Kannada speaking people across the globe. From day one of this collaboration CIS-A2K and Kannada Wikimedia community has organised many events in collaboration with Alva's college to enhance such as Medicinal plants project, Faculty training and Alva's Nudisir documentation etc. To ensure that the students and faculty members receive training on writing, digital information literacy, ability to critically engage with a concept/theme and Language proficiency skills were introduced.

Later in July 2017, Wikipedia student's association was started by the Karavali Wikimedians, to get energetic students to contribute on the Wikimedia projects by conducting different Wikimedia activities. But in the later days, Alva's college requested CIS-A2K to take it over and help them to co-design the entire program as Alva's college and CIS-A2K have the following mutual interests.

  • Strengthening Indian languages for higher education purposes.
  • Expanding the digital presence of Indian languages.
  • Free access to knowledge not just in English but also in Indian languages.

Before taking it over CIS-A2K had planned some of the events to understand the requirements and interest of the students and college, a discussion was made with the student community. This resulted in CIS-A2K team incubating different other programs for the students and faculty members to have hands-on experience of the knowledge/training they gained being part of the program such as internship, weekly meetup, representation of student-community leaders at various Wiki events.

Activities:

CIS-A2K organised a two day Wikisource workshop for the students of Wikipedia student association at Alva's college on 14 & 15 December 2019. This event was designed based on the requirements and needs of the student's community to enhance the skills in Wikisource. The student community at Alva's college has been contributing actively to Kannada Wikisource from past 10-12 months, but the students were lacking some of the advanced skills which would enhance their knowledge and ease their contribution on Wikisource. To make the best use of the students time (manpower)  a needs assessment was done with the students to understand the requirements.  OCR, Advance proofreading techniques, Complex templates, Transclusion of Books and  Advance formatting using JS were taught to the students in this workshop. In total 18 students took part and proofread 231, validated 54 pages, in total 2,720 edits were made. 

  • Social Media Campaign

A social media reach out has been started with an aim to encourage the students by highlighting their works and to reach out to more number of students about the Wikimedia activities by explaining the importance of Wikipedia in Education and editing as a contribution to Open knowledge. This will provide insight into the work done by the students. 

Follow-up
In the upcoming months activities like Edit-a-Thon, Wiki meet-ups, Wiki Internships and Wiki Competitions are planned.

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    MoU Signing with Alva's college
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    Participants in Wikisource Training
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    Group photo of participants

National Digital Library of India edit

  What?
CIS-A2K representatives participated in two meetings with National Digital Library of India (NDLI) to formulate a possible collaboration with the organisation. During these meetings, the terms of collaboration were finalized, Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was drafted, operational framework and action plan for the next two academic years were discussed.

  Why?

NDLI is a central government project under Ministry of Human Resource Development which aims to collect and collate metadata and provide full text index from several national and international digital libraries, as well as other relevant sources. It also functions a digital repository of textbooks, articles, videos, audio books, lectures, simulations etc. The huge resource, it contains, can be useful to enrich Wikimedia projects in various ways. Also, integrating Wikisource and Wikidata contents into NDLI websites will bring more visibility and attention to the projects

  When and where?
The meetings were organised by NDLI and held at IIT Kharagpur on 9 September 2019 and IIT New Delhi on 8 December 2019.

  How?
CIS-A2K had the first formal meeting with Professor Partha Pratim Das , Department of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT Kharagpur and Joint Principal Investigator, NDLI, Prof. Plaban Kumar Bhowmick, Assistant Professor, Centre for Educational Technology, IIT Kharagpur and Co-Principal Investigator, NDLI and Mr. Nanda Gopal Chattopadhyay, Chief Technical Officer, NDLI at IIT Kharagpur on 9 September 2019 and a future plan for possible collaboration was discussed regarding integration of Wikisource and Wikidata contents into NDLI website, using NDLI contents in Wikimedia projects, outreach etc. It was decided to include Wikimedia Foundation as one of the three parties to sign the MoU and after the meeting the three parties worked on drafting the MoU. A second meeting happened at IIT Delhi on 8 December 2019, where apart from NDLI and CIS-A2K, WMF representatives participated to discuss further on the future action plans and finalize the MoU.

Leadership development edit

City and regional Wiki-meetups edit

 
Participants during the discussion at August 2019 meeting

  What?
CIS-A2K conducts and supports conducting regional and city Wiki-meetups. Wiki-meetups help to resolve disputes in face to face interactions. They are placed for Wikimedians to discuss ideas, activities, collaborations and future plans. CIS-A2K tries to build a bonding between community members by conducting meetups.

  How?
In the last 6 months, CIS-A2K conducted 1 online meeting and supported 2 Punjabi community meetups in Punjab, India.

  • Online meetup, 22 July 2019

The online meetup was conducted in the month of July 2019 on Google Hangouts. 7 members participated. 6 of them were male and 1 was female. The detailed discussion can be seen here. It was important as participants discussed to bring unactive experienced editors back on Punjabi Wikimedia projects. Secondly, Jagseer S Sidhu gave an update of SEABA School project and ਲਵਪ੍ਰੀਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਸਿੱਧੂ gave an update of the Heritage GLAM project. Participants were requested to participate in the village pump discussions on Punjabi Wikipedia or Punjabi Wikisource. Manavpreet Kaur shared her idea of the opportunity to collaborate with Pingalwara Amritsar.

  • Meetup in Patiala, 25 August 2019

The first offline meetup took place on 25 August 2019 at Patiala. The detailed report can be seen here. 15 community members participated. In that 4 participants were female and 11 were male.

As 3 members were new, so the introduction of Wikipedia, Wikisource, Commons, and Wikidata was given. Jagseer S Sidhu shared his learning from uploading audiobooks on Punjabi Wikisource and Stalinjeet Brar shared his idea of an upcoming event about Guru Nanak Dev's 550 Years birth celebration. The introduction of Project Tiger 2.0 was also given as per request by some members and participants were notified to apply for Chromebook and internet connection.

  • Meetup in Faridkot, 22 September 2019

The second offline meetup took place on 22 September 2019 at Government Brijindra College, Faridkot. Meetup event page may be seen here. 7 Punjabi Wikimedians participated in this workshop. This was the follow-up meetup of last year's meetup - last year's meetup. The discussion was to organize Photowalk in Faridkot and it was fruitful to meet Kulwinder guruharsahai that he had some photos clicked by himself of monuments of Punjab. He said he will share his data. Jagmit Singh Brar shared his views about the upcoming Project Tiger 2.0 competition and an update was given during this meetup by Stalinjeet Brar to document Faridkot district by capturing photos and by creating articles about villages and cities.

Follow-up

  • CIS-A2K will conduct 2 more meetups before the month of June 2020 in Punjab, India.
  • CIS-A2K will organize one meetup in another city of Punjab apart from Patiala before May 2020.

Jal Bodh project supported by CIS-A2K edit

  What?
The Indian National Trust for Art & Heritage Pune Chapter is working with various organisations to preserve the natural heritage places like rivers in Pune district of Maharashtra, India. To sustain the efforts to build knowledge on rivers, INTACH has decided to collaborate with CIS-A2K to develop long-term plan. This was the first workshop to develop structure of the project, decide the stakeholders and follow-up action plan for the future.

  Why?
As the state of rivers is worsening day by day, the active citizens and organisations have realised the urgent need to document the rivers in details. This also generates the awareness among the readers.

  When and where?
The two day workshop was conducted on 29 & 30 July at INTACH office in Pune. Total 20 participants from seven organisations actively contributed to Wikimedia projects.

  How?
Day one started with introductions by members of organisations - Jeevitnadi (Living River Foundation), Sajag Nagrik Manch, Parisar, Centre for Environment & Education, Jnana Prabodhini, Ecological Society and INTACH. The concept of 'Project Jalbodh' was elaborated. The keynote address by Prof. Madhav Gadgil focused on the integration of citizen science and Wikimedia projects. Introduction to major Wikimedia projects was given in next session. The examples of river and water related content were taken for understanding the context. Then various members with their vast experience collaboratively evolved the structure of article on river in Marathi Wikipedia. According to local context, relevant sections and sub-sections were designed. Separate project page defining this structure was created on Marathi Wikipedia under the Wiki Project Jalbodh. This was the crucial activity for the project. After this session, the organisations conducted the analysis of the content developed by them which is to be contributed in Wikimedia projects.

On the second day, the activity started with uploading images on Commons. Along with this, the encyclopedic content available with the organisations was discussed for giving references. The articles were created in the sandboxes by groups on similar themes. Various skills like advanced search options for finding online references, archiving of url's on Wayback machine of Internet Archive were also acquired by the participants. The category tree for the rivers was also designed. The detailed discussions on building databases, maps and media with community involvement was conducted.

The Wikimedia workshop was appreciated by all participants. We found it useful for our ongoing work regarding saving our Pune rivers. It gave us hands on experience of how we can develop Wikimedia platform for the cause of documenting and spreading awareness about our rivers. The facilitation by CIS-A2K representative and Marathi Wiki community members was very helpful. The talk by Prof Madhav Gadgil was inspiring and gave us insights on how important this tool can be in empowering citizens who want to understand their environment. Guidance on designing and implementing the Jalbodh project was of immense value and many NGOs who were part of this workshop have decided to continue developing this, which was a great long term outcome.- Supriya Goturkar-Mahabaleshwarkar (Co-convenor, INTACH PUNE CHAPTER)

Learnings
Like minded experienced organisations working on one theme have high-level enthusiasm towards free knowledge creation. It is difficult to organise the content prepared by activists previously for awareness generation or reporting purpose. Multiple sessions are required to train them for encyclopedic writing.

Follow-up
Two follow-up workshops are planned till June 2020. These will be hosted by different organisations.

VVIT WikiConnect activities supported by CIS-A2K edit

Wikidata Training course edit

What
Wikidata Training Program is a 3-month training course on Wikidata lead by VVIT WikiConnect, a college club from Andhra Pradesh, in collaboration with CIS-A2K's support. A total of 19 undergraduate students from the club are a part of this training. Certificates from A2K will be provided to those who attend all the sessions and do the work assigned by the organisers.

Why
Previously at VVIT WikiConnect, one-day workshops on Wikidata would be conducted. But it got challenging to cover all topics related to Wikidata such as tools and SPARQL queries and also provide a hands-on learning experience in a single day. This is why the whole model was shifted from a one-day workshop to a 3-month course.

How
The course consists of 3 offline sessions and 2 online sessions. Apart from just explaining, students would also be given assignments such as adding a given number of labels in a said amount of time, adding references, categorizing given references into primary, secondary or tertiary since they are crucial aspects while editing any Wiki project. In the first online session, students would be introduced to Wikimedia and its sister projects, Five Pillars of Wikipedia, and basic Wikidata terminologies like p and q values.
When it comes to offline sessions, they are explained and also provided hands-on experience in adding Wikidata label sections, properties, and statements, references, etc. In the final offline session, a resource person would visit the club and explain about tools like the Tabernacle and also SPARQL queries.

When and Where
All the offline events are conducted at VVIT WikiConnect and dates can be seen here.

Follow-up
As a follow up of the training program, an 8-day online campaign will be conducted to all the participants and the top 5 will be rewarded.

Learnings
There have been hiccups while trying to complete the course in the stipulated amount of time due to several reasons. Since students in the program range from 1st year to 3rd-year undergraduates, some of them have exams and the trainers had to conduct separate online sessions for them to explain once again.

24 hour Independence day datathon edit

What
24-hour Independence day data-a-thon, as the name suggests, is a 24-hour edit-a-thon on Wikidata conducted at VVIT WikiConnect club.

Why
The datathon was conducted on the eve of 73rd Independence Day of India by the members of VVIT WikiConnect club.

When and Where
Datathon took place at VVIT WikiConnect on 17 and 18 August 2019.

How
All the members of the Wikidata training course were notified about the event and 20 of them have confirmed their participation. Apart from Wikidata training course members, 6 other Wikipedians have also joined the event and have improved labels and statements related to India for 24 hours without a break!
26 participants have made 56.1K edits to 25.9K items by adding 5.17M bytes. And, users User:Asrija1, User:Bhashyam Tharun Kumar, User:ESWAR NAGA MAHESH, User:Kundurthi0601 made it to the list of national-wide top contributors to this datathon.

Wikisource training course edit

What
Telugu Wikisource training is an ongoing training program on Telugu Wikisource. In this program, twenty participants from VVIT WikiConnect were being trained on various aspects of Telugu Wikisource

Why
This training course aims at making students at the club familiar with Wikisource and it's tools.

When and Where
This is an ongoing event. More details about the event can be seen here

How
Training is done in 1 online and 4 offline sessions. Sessions were scheduled such that there is sufficient time for the trainees to work on the topics from the previous session. Online sessions were mostly conducted to clarify doubts among the course students by the organizers. Whereas offline sessions deal with topics like OCR, proofreading, templates, transclusion, etc.

Follow-up
Each student is given the task of proofreading at least one book and it will be checked by another student and a coordinator/organiser to make sure the work is done correctly.

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    Hand-holding by the trainers
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    Group photo of participants in Wikisource Training
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    Participants of Independence day datathon

Supporting Indian Wikimedia communities through CIS-A2K request page edit

  What?
CIS-A2K started the request page in 2013 to provide the support to the Indian Wikimedia communities and events conducted by the Wikimedia community in India. This includes financial, non-financial support & Technical.

  Why?
Wikimedia communities request CIS-A2K to provide Finical and Non-finical support for the events, activities conducted by their community.

  When:
The request page is open throughout the yeat for the community members.

  Where:
CIS-A2K/Requests

  How:
CIS-A2K request page is a place where the Wikimedians can request for the support to the community event or activities. Between 1 July 2019 and 30 December 2020, we have received 12 requests out of which 11 are financial requests and 1 is a non-financial request. The graph shows the distribution of the requests received from the Indic communities.

 

In the section below we are going to highlight 2 requests and going to explain in details:

  • Workshop and Editathons to accomplish Tulu offline Wikipedia to schools: Karavali Wikimedians planned and conducted this project to provide offline Tulu Wikipedia to schools. This project envisages providing offline Wikipedia to those schools where Tulu is taught as a language. This project will also help all those who are looking for encyclopedic content in Tulu, be it about Tulu culture, language, tradition or about all other world knowledge in Tulu.

Bridging Gender Gap edit

Wiki-orientation at Dr. G. R. Damodaran College of Science edit

What
The Wikiorientation was a brief session on introducing Wikimedia projects to a batch of 350 students from Arts and Science department of Dr.GR Damodharan College of Science on 6-7 December 2019.

Why
This session was part of "Hour of Code", an International event celebrated across the globe to encourage students to develop their knowledge on Computer Science. The main objective of the session was to create awareness about Wikimedia and areas of contribution for students, and gather feedback on the research on bridging gender gap which is currently in progress.

How
A day long discussion on Wikimedia projects was held, followed by a presentation on the "Bridging Gender Gap" research. The session had 50% female participation who actively took part in the discussions. Wiki projects focused for women were discussed viz., Women In Red, WikiLoves Women, Wiki Women for Women Well Being (WWWW) etc. The key issues of women working on technology in a structured environment (such as an educational institution in this case) were discussed. Press coverage about the event can be seen at Desathin Nambikai , The Covai mail news , Prime Time Tamil , Covai news and Updatenews360.com

"Bhuvana, you have motivated and encouraged students to contribute to society through Wikimedia, the knowledge sharing platform. You also gave insights on opportunities in Wikimedia community and the efforts Wikimedia is taking to bridge the gender gap. This was very informative and an eye-opener session. Many female students have registered themselves in Wikimedia. We thank you for your presence in our campus and delivering such a thought provoking session."- Dr.G.Radhamani, Director

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    Group photo of the participants
  •  
    Wikiorientation session in progress

Indian Women in Science Edit-a-thon edit

What
This event was aimed at creating articles on Indian Women in Science, as part of ongoing efforts in content creation related to women on English Wikipedia. In its fourth iteration, the event had 11 participants from four different languages (including some new learners) who participated online and offline. The event was held at JNCASR, Bangalore on 31 August 2019 in collaboration with CIS-A2K.

How
There were two lightning talks about the low representation of content on women scientists on Wiki and a basic training session on developing content for Wikidata. The event page can be seen here.


Follow-up

  • As this forum has many researchers and scientists from various fields, more edit-a-thons focussed on female researchers and scientists are to be conducted in association with the institution.

Others edit

Celebration of Wikidata's 7th Birthday edit

What?
Punjabi Wikimedians are active on Wikipedia and Wikisource. Apart from these two Wikimedia projects, Wikidata has its own value. To engage Punjabi community members with Wikidata, CIS-A2K celebrated Wikidata's 7th birthday.

When and where?
The event was organised on 3 November 2019 at Patiala.

How?
This celebration was a monthly meetup of the community members as well. 9 people have participated in this celebration and meetup. Apart from the celebration, some of the topics which were discussed during this meetup were:
After a brief introduction, tasks were assigned to participants to contribute on Wikidata. Participants contributed via Tabernacle tool and they have some added labels in Punjabi and Hindi language.

A good tool improves the way you work. There are many tools for Wikidata. It seems fun to edit Wikidata by using these tools. Tabernacle is one of them I have learned today. I am imagining that it would be fun to edit Wikisource also by using tools like this.
- User:Benipal hardarshan Administrator on Punjabi Wikisource

Satpal Dandiwal and Satdeep Gill shared their experience of WikidataCon2019 happened in Berlin. They brought laptops from Asaf (WMF) for Benipal hardarshan and Stalinjeet Brar which were given to them under Hardware donation program. Participants also discussed the upcoming activities of the Punjabi community.

Learning

  • It is beneficial for new members to start from translating labels rather than to start from teaching them the Wikidata query.

Follow-up

  • CIS-A2K will conduct one event before June 2020 related to Wikidata.
  • CIS-A2K will start WikiProject Punjab on Wikidata before June 2020.
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    Group photo of the participants

Wikidata WikiProject India Newsletter edit

  What?
Wikidata WikiProject India Newsletter is a quarterly newsletter intended to share news and updates about Wikidata activities in India and/or by the Indians.

  Why?
Recent years have seen wide range of activities around Wikidata in Indian context. The newsletter has been started to summarise major activities happening and share them with the wider communities.

  When and where?
Every 3 months starting from October 1, 2019 and online.

  How?
The major activities around Wikidata in Indian context happening for 3 months are tracked and a short one-line summary are added to describe the achievements, news or updates. The first two issues of the newsletter have been published on October 1, 2019 and January 1, 2020. A post about the newsletter is shared to the WikiProject India participants and/or newletter subscribers on their talk page along with wikidata-l and wikimediaindia-l mailing lists.

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