Indic Wikisource speak : Shubha

CIS :Tell us about yourself, When did you join Wikimedia movement? And What are the projects you are involved in?

Shubha: I am Shubha (user id – same) working as a coordinator for wiki wing of Samskrita Bharati, Bengaluru. I joined Wikimedia movement in July 2011. For the first five years we concentrated on Wikipedia project. Now we are concentrating on wikisource. I personally have worked on sa Wikipedia, sa wikiquote and sa wikisource.

Shubha:  There are many old books in Samskrit language. We search for pdf files of old books and upload them in wikicommons. Then we do editing on Wikisource. We are having the facility of scanning the books also. Currently, keeping the student group in our mind, we have collected the Samskrit syllabus in various universities of Karnataka. Made a list of the curriculum related books , collected and uploaded the pdf files so that it will be useful for the students.

Shubha: Awareness about Samskrit Wikisource can be termed as less. We need to reach the people and create awareness in a big way. So keeping this in mind, we have conducted exhibitions in various Samskrit conventions as well as annual day celebrations in universities. These were useful for the public as well as students.  We were successful in conducting a couple of workshops in colleges also.

Q:What are the challenges do you face while contributing to the project? Or social challenges while reaching out to authors or publishers.

Shubha : OCR :- There are many books in Samskrit like dictionaries,  Puranas where the text is divided into 2 columns. OCR tool available in the Wikisource cannot perform this task in the correct manner. So updated ocr tool will be a big boon for us. This will help us to upload more such books.

Technical support :- Samskrit wikisourcers are not having enough exposure to technical knowledge. Wikisource tools and gadgets are growing day by day.  If we get systematic assistance in this regard, we will be able to increase our efficiency.

Creating awareness :- Awareness can be created in 3 levels. Level one will be an introductory workshop that can be conducted in various educational institutions about the use of wiki. Second level will be to approach student group and teach them the editing the wikisource. Third level will be to contact the Samskrit teachers or lecturers for the proof reading task as it requires Samskrit knowledge.

Shubha: As the texts are in the searchable format, many students and research scholars can make use of Wikisource. As we all know, Samskrit is a treasure trove of knowledge. There are many such books that can be uploaded and utilised by the public. For this, we are putting effort to upload more and more books and make our Wikisource a rich one.

Shubha : Recently, we have uploaded a book named Alankaramanihara, which deals with the figure of speech. This book was published long back and is not in the print now. We happened to come across this and were successful in uploading all the 4 volumes of this book. Now this is available in the Wikisource in the transcluded form.