Centre for Internet and Society

Digitize any Book in the Public Domain

subha — 2014-04-03T08:41:18Z

The article is about a mass scale digitization project for Kannada WikiSource by two Wikipedians.

This was originally published in Opensource.com on March 27, 2014.

A form of poetry in India called Vachana sahitya is part of the popular Indian language, Kannada. It evolved in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th as part of the religious Lingayatha movement. Since that time, more than 259 Vachana writers, called Vachanakaru, have compiled over 11,000 Vachanas (verses).

21,000 of these verses were digitally published into 15 volumes, called Samagra Vachana Samputa, by the government of Karnataka. These volumes were then turned into a standalone project called Vachana Sanchaya; this project was taken on by two Kannada Wikimedians, a Kannada linguist, and the author O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy—to enrich the Kannada WikiSource. This team used Unicode, a standard of consistency for converting text (and code) into a new format.

Swamy was trying to access these poems, and was having trouble because it was in ISCII, an Indian character encoding standard. We began writing scripts to make the Vachanas (poems) searchable by an index. But, in order to do that well, we had to build a platform for everyone to use: the linguistic researchers, students, and the public at large who are interested in reaching this literature.

Omshivaprakash, a Kannada Wikimedian, worked on the architecture of the platform, decided the infrastructure requirements, and chose the open source software tools to use. I was involved in providing critical hacks for digitization and valuable inputs through suggestions, feedback, and quality assurance.

At present, our repository, Vachana Sanchaya, has around 200,000 unique words that were derived from these poems. The public has been using our repository and accessing Vahanas (poems) from our Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ profiles. There are thousands of people now who read a Vahana as part of their daily routine. Vachana Sanchaya is not just meant for reading the poems, it is also meant for research. So, we have added a way for researchers to help us review the content and will be adding references from various research papers.


Above: A screenshot of the Vachana sahitya page

The most commonly searched words are:

ಕರ್ಮ(Karma: English: work/deed)
ಸತ್ಯ(SathyaEnglish: truthfulness )
ನದಿ(Nadī: English:river)

ಆಂಗೀರಸ, ಪುಲಸ್ತ್ಯ, ಪುಲಹ, ಶಾಂತ,
ದಕ್ಷ, ವಸಿಷ್ಠ, ವಾಮದೇವ, ನವಬ್ರಹ್ಮ, ಕೌಶಿಕ, ಶೌನಕ, ಸ್ವಯಂಭು, ಸ್ವಾರೋಚಿಷ, ಉತ್ತಮ, ತಾಮಸ, ರೈವತ,
ಚಾಕ್ಷಷ, ವೈವಸ್ವತ, ಸೂರ್ಯಸಾವರ್ಣಿ,ಚಂದ್ರಸಾವರ್ಣಿ, ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಸಾವರ್ಣಿ,
ಇಂದ್ರ ಸಾವರ್ಣಿ ಇವರು ಇಪ್ಪತ್ತು ಮಂದಿ ಪ್ರಪಂಚ ನಿರ್ಮಾಣ ಸಹಾಯ[ದ]ವರು. ಹತ್ತೊಂಬತ್ತು ಎಂದರೆ ಪುಣ್ಯನದಿಗಳು.
ಅದು ಎಂತೆಂದಡೆ: ಗ್ರಂಥ

All of the content is currently available to the public through the OpenData API, and once the reviewing the work is complete, it will be distributed in the public domain through WikiSource. This will open up the system for students, developers, researchers, and anyone interested in building linguistic tools for Kannada and other Indic languages. Users will be able to use our code to digitize any book available in the public domain. Early literature in any language is well-respected, so making it available via an open platform allows for reuse of the content for research, publication, and other documentation work.

We encourage other projects of this kind to follow our method and use any part of our process that is helpful.

Going foward, we would like to:

Initiate Natural Language Processing (NLP) projects if more researches help to tag words and grow the glossary
Continue work on subsequent, similar projects for Sarvagnana Vachanagalu and Dāsa Sanchaya (work has begun) and Vyasa and Muddann (work not yet started)
Extend this platform to other the contemporary literature works available in the public domain.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/opensource-march-27-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-digitize-any-book-in-public-domain

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource

praskrishna — 2013-08-29T10:32:39Z

Wikimedia India in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society is organising a workshop on "Digitization of books for Indic language WikiSource" on August 18, 2013, 2.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.

This workshop will be conducted by Malayalam Wikimedian Viswanathan Prabhakaran. Anyone interested in learning about the process of digitising old manuscripts, books and creating text based documents could join this workshop. The workshop will cover the following topics:

Best practices in capturing images using a camera and tripod through demonstration;
An introduction to the types of scanners;
How to hold books and the need to treat old books with proper care;
Discussion on image formats and some basic comparison (i.e. djvu, PDF, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF);
Introduction and practical use of SM Tether (using Nikon dSLR) in capturing images;
Practical demonstration of using Scan Tailor (a free software) in post-processing of scanned pages. Splitting, deskewing, rearranging borders, and de-speckling of scanned pages;
Some basic discussion on copyright and introduction to Wiki Source;
Importance of online archival resources (DLI, DSAL, Archive.org, etc) and when to do or not to redo scanning of books (i.e., image resolution) that are already available in scanned format;
OCR and Indian languages.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/digitization-of-books-for-indic-language-wikisource

Digitising contest to preserve rare books in Malayalam

praskrishna — 2014-01-31T06:33:15Z

The Malayalam Wiki Grandhasala has announced a competition in digitally preserving rare books in Malayalam.

The article was published in the Hindu on January 4, 2014.

‘Digitalisation Contest 2014’, launched by the Wiki community, is aimed at digitising rare books in Malayalam, the copyright of which has expired, and making them available online in Unicode font.

The Wiki community wants the books to reach innumerable readers through the Internet.

The competition will be held in separate categories for schools and the general public. The competition involves entering the text on the computer and proof-reading. The prizes include e-book readers and books.

In the first phase of the project, 55 books listed by the Kerala Sahitya Akademi have been offered for digitising. They include ‘Samskshepa Vedartham’ (1772), ‘Malayanmayude Vyakaranam’ (1863) and ‘Hasthalakshanadeepika’ (1892).
Copies of magazines such as ‘Rasikaranjini’ and ‘Mangalodayam’ have also been offered for digitising.

Those who wish to take part in the competition should visit the Wiki Grandhasala (ml.wikisource.org) and become a member of the project.

Details of the competition and the list of books may be downloaded. The contest will be open till January 31. It is being organised on the 10th anniversary of the Wiki Source project by the Centre for Internet and Society, IT@School project, Swanthanthra Malayalam Computing and the Kerala Sahitya Akademi.

For details, contact K. Manoj, general convener of the contest (cellphone number: 9495576262).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-january-4-2014-digitising-contest-to-preserve-rare-books-in-malayalam

Digitisation, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource Orientation Workshop at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, Pune District

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-06-07T08:37:48Z

A digitization workshop was held at Vigyan Ashram, following the success of the introductory workshop in February.

On 5 February, an introductory Wikipedia orientation program was held in partnership with Vigyan Ashram, for 15 youths from Pabal and surrounding villages in Shirur, Maharashtra. Given the keen interest and enthusiasm of the participants, a follow up workshop was held on 3 April, 2017.

This workshop was attended by 30 participants who were trained on Wikimedia projects such as Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource. They were given an orientation on digitization and OCR tools as well. The workshop aims to enable the training of resource persons who can go onto be employed at libraries and museums in order to help with their digitization efforts. The scanning of old encyclopedias in Marathi has also been proposed for the Wiktionary project.

Participants were taught how to upload books from the Internet Archive to Wikimedia Commons. Subsequently,there was also a demonstration of transferring books from Commons to Wikisource. There are two ways of doing this: the page by page OCR process or converting a complete book through OCR4Wikisource. As OCRS4Wikisource program runs only on Linux, limitation of machines at the event was a hurdle in providing all the participants a hands on experience. Therefore, the scanning activity could not be completed.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-wikimedia-commons-and-wikisource-orientation-workshop-at-vigyan-ashram-pabal-pune-district

Digitisation sprint at Andhra Loyola College Vijayawada to bring more books on Telugu Wikisource

Pavan Santhosh — 2016-02-12T11:29:10Z

This 12th, A digitisation sprint is being organised for student Wikipedians of Andhra Loyola College Vijayawada. Students will learn about scanning books, will use OCR engine and digitise books on Telugu Wikisource. The event is organised by CIS-A2K where Telugu Wikimedian Viswanadh will be participating to mentor the new Wikimedians.

Telugu Wikisource, a free online library in Telugu-language. Currently there are about 8 volunteers, known as Wikisourcers, who find Telugu-language text that are available under free licenses like Public Domain or Creative Commons licenses, digitise them and make the books available on the project. Their effort has brought about 29,680 pages of digitised text from old and new published works of different genres ranging from popular science and religious literature to literary contributions of notable authors of the states of Andhra and Telengana.

35 student Wikipedians of the Andhra Loyola College will be participating in this event and will learn about scanning of books, converting text from scanned images using OCR engine and digitising books on Telugu Wikisource by typing and proof-reading. At least 150-200 folios are expected to be digitized on Telugu Wikisource. Most importantly, this activity will also help bring 5-10 new Wikisourcers to Telugu Wikisource. As this is just a two-day long event, more follow up sessions will be conducted over time with the same set of students to help them learn better about the technical process involved and overall digitisation.This is the first of its kind in the institution where the students will not just learn about digitisation of books but will participate in a live contribution and make more Telugu books available online.

"Introducing Student Wikisourcers to Telugu Wikisource will help in developing the project. Also this is a very timely activity because even few days delay might result in really low participation as exams are coming up. "
— Viswanadh (User:విశ్వనాధ్.బి.కె.) ,Telugu Wikipedian (comment from Telugu Wikipedia Village Pump)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/digitisation-sprint-at-andhra-loyola-college-vijayawada-to-bring-more-books-on-telugu-wikisource

Digitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949

subodh — 2022-10-11T14:53:58Z

The digitization project of O Bharat, a historic biweekly published between 1912 to 1949 in Goa was completed through collaboration of different organizations. The trustees of Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust initiated the project in collaboration with Marathi department of Goa University, Bhakti Dnyan Marg Sanstha and Goa Central Library. The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge Programme facilitated the project with technical and financial assistance. Two local students scanned 12000 pages in 8 days. The year wise volumes of O Bharat are now freely available on Wikimedia Commons in the form of archive.


Above: Front page of O Bharat in Portuguese	Above: Front page of O Bharat in Marathi

Context

It all started like this. During the Wikimedia session at Goa University in October 2021, it was realised that there is very little documentation about the ‘Goa Liberation Struggle’ on Wikimedia projects. So, in the meeting Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar from the Marathi language department took the lead to develop a project around this theme.

The exhaustive list of freedom fighters, major incidents in history, the places related with struggle, monuments and memorials was prepared. The next day, to have a glimpse of the situation on ground, we toured a few places and monuments in South Goa. As we were shocked to see the sorry state of the memorials, we came across a monument of Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai known as Bharatkar (an editor of O Bharat), in a lush green forest near Quepem village. Being curious to know about the history of O Bharat publication, Prof. Vinay introduced us to the grandson of Bharatkar, Adv. Khagendra Desai who founded Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust, non-profit organisation in Goa to archive the works of Bharatkar.

As both of us share the same vision, CIS-A2K partnered with Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust, to relicense and digitise freedom fighter Bharatkar’s ‘O Bharat,’ a Marathi-Portuguese bilingual weekly, currently housed at Goa Central Public Library.

About the 36 Year Run of ‘O Bharat’ upto India’s Independence

Freedom fighter, social reformer and journalist 'Bharat'kar Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai, (7th Nov 1885 - 15th Aug 1949), started 'O Bharat' (in Portuguese) or 'Bharat' (in Marathi) on 6th November 1912. For 36 years thereafter, Bharatkar courageously protested the Portuguese occupation, relentlessly advocated radical and progressive social reforms and doggedly championed the cause of an independent and sovereign Indian Goa.

Partnerships

The partnerships with various stakeholders were developed after a series of discussions and official communications. The Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust obtained official permissions from the State Government departments for the access of O Bharat volumes in the library. Goa Central Public Library provided access to the bound volumes of O Bharat and permission to scan them. Another local organisation, Bhakti Dnyan Marg Sanstha in association with Goa University Marathi Department identified few students for the digitisation.

Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons

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. We conducted digitisation training with Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar and students, Shravani Parab and Shridhar Raut, from Goa University to scan 12000 pages in 8 days. The officials of Goa Central Public Library cooperated in access to original volumes and in the process of digitisation. The Chief Minister of Goa inaugurated the project on Wikimedia Commons on India’s 75th Independence day, 15 August 2022. The year wise volumes of ‘O Bharat’ are now freely accessible to anyone in the world at any time anywhere. The uploading of the volumes is in progress.

Media links

The event of launching digitised content on Wikimedia was very well received by the people in Goa. The researchers, students, readers and journalists will have this reference value content while exploring the history of Goa. Various national and local media published the news covering all the aspects of this archive. The links are given below -

This was originally published on Wikimedia Blog in September 2022

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-of-o-bharat

Digitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949

subodh — 2022-10-11T13:11:15Z

Context

About the 36 Year Run of ‘O Bharat’ upto India’s Independence

Partnerships

Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons

Media links

This was originally published on Wikimedia Blog in September 2022

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-o-bharat

Digital Technology Engaging Pedagogy through Hindi Wikipedia - A Case Study

Dr. George Joseph,Dr. Sebastian K.A, and Kavitha A — 2018-10-28T05:56:25Z

We have published an article in International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities. The article is titled "Digital Technology Engaging Pedagogy through Hindi Wikipedia - A Case Study". The authors of the article are Hindi faculty members of Christ University and Ananth Subray from the Centre for Internet & Society provided research assistance.

Abstract

Hindi Wikipedia (Hindi Edition of Wikipedia) in the undergraduate language classroom. Wikipedia or Open Source Learning is a powerful tool in the acquisition of knowledge especiallyin today’s digital context.While many of the European languages have already established afoothold in the digital space, the Indian languages are yet to create a niche for themselves. Even after a decade of its launch,the Hindi Wikipediacould not attire the enabled richness of the English Wikipedia.While there are about fifty lakh articles in English, Hindi Wikipedia has only about a lakh.

This paper is an attempt to show how a whole new concept of productive activity for faculty andstudents can be opened through a study of basics in Indian language computing typing and editing Wikipedia articles.It explains the value of Wikis for teaching and learning as compared to traditional teaching and physical paper assignment model, showing the power of Open Source Learning and Wikipedia.Most importantly, it shows how Wikipedia and Global Peer Review can directly and immediately influence the quality and relevance of Teaching and Learning in classrooms and learning spaces today.This pilot study ofstudents’ use of sources in authoring Wikipedia articles shows, how students processed texts from sources to compose their own texts transforming classrooms from a place of knowledge deliveryto a place of creativity and research.Through Wikipedia, students are being empowered tobecome creative writers, efficient editors and successful researchers. Article creation and editingof articles in Hindi for Wikipedia is bound to transform the students’ ability to interpret, analyze,create new knowledge and develop their Research Aptitude. This article addresses the importance of Digital Learning through Wikipedia as Pedagogy in Christ University’s UG language classrooms and discusses the prospects and possibilities of using Wikipedia as a learning tool through a case study.

Read the peer reviewed article published by the International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities, Volume 6, Issue 8, August 2018

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digital-technology-engaging-pedagogy-through-hindi-wikipedia-a-case-study

Digital Resources in Telugu: A Workshop for Research Scholars

praskrishna — 2013-09-12T10:30:45Z

The Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University and the CIS-A2K invite you to a workshop for research scholars on September 13, 2013.

Note to Participant:
As you may know, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, and is the 5th most-visited website in the world! It's completely free to use and re-use, it has no advertising, and is available in more than 286 different languages - including 20+ Indian languages. Wikipedia articles are written by ordinary people who volunteer to share their knowledge with the world.

What students gain from Wikipedia editing:
It improves writing skills. Wikipedia provides students a platform to hone their writing skills. Writing on Wikipedia enhances critical thinking and the ability to see all sides of a story. Students will find this incredibility useful in both their personal and professional lives while evaluating the pros and cons of different situations, projects, assignments etc. Wikipedia editing also strengthens research skills. A Wikipedia editor has to provide credible references by looking up books, journals and online materials. Writing on Wikipedia is good practice for those who will also work on a thesis or a research project.

Your articles will be read by thousands of people across the globe. If you edit a Wikipedia article, it is there *forever* and the audience can be any number from the 500 million who read Wikipedia every month!

It teaches students how to collaborate! Editing Wikipedia is magical. You add some content and someone from some other part of the class or school or town or country or somewhere else in the world adds a little bit more and makes the contribution that much better. Wikipedia helps one learn how to work productively with other people, even those you don’t know and may never actually meet.

The workshop will cover the following:

Essential Information Literacy for Researcher in Digital Era
Changing trends in knowledge production post digital turn
What exactly is Wikipedia and how does it work?
How do I edit Wikipedia?
What can I edit?
How can I input text in Indian languages?
How do I insert images?
How do I find and add references?
Do’s and Don’ts

Schedule:
10 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. (Discussion and demonstration)
2.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m. (Practical session)

Important Instructions for Interested Participants

Each student attending the workshop should register themselves on Wikipedia. Please note that once you register on a Wikipedia project, you can use that 'Username' (i.e. same log-in details) across all Wikipedias and Wikimedia platforms. This should be done by September 12, 2013 (before the workshop commences). Please note that you will not be able to register more than 5 Usernames from a single IP address within 24 hours (a security feature of Wikipedia). This tutorial will help you with Registration on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial/Registration
Once registered the students must furnish their details on the google doc. I have already entered my data just as sample. Please circulate this link to all the students at the earliest. This should be done by September 12, 2013 before the commencement of the Workshop https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AshSF7ZKRBR5dEY0N0tlZTcxRDktSHdaOERWeGhuRUE&usp=sharing
All the students are expected to do editing on Wikipedia. We will choose Telugu Wikipedia as a site to do some editing. Please be assured that we will also show how to use English Wikipedia. For this workshop each student should come up with one article at least in Telugu. This should be typed and be available in a soft copy form and could be carried in a thumb drive or any other storage media which should be easily accessible to them during the training programme. If you are not able to type, please bring the write-up in your note book. Check if the topic you are writing on is already available on Telugu Wikipedia (www.te.wikipedia.org).

Suggested topics: a) About a key Theorist in your field of research; b) About a critical concept that you use in your Research; c) Your Research Object; d) Any other notable topic that you feel should be in your language Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/digital-resources-in-telugu

Digital Publishing Meeting

praskrishna — 2014-09-09T08:25:32Z

As an initiative towards building a community, a meeting on digital publishing was conducted by C-DAC GIST Pune on August 22, 2014. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja attended the meeting.

See the Facebook page of the event here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/c-dac-august-22-2014-digital-publishing-meeting

Digital native: Control A, Backspace

nishant — 2016-06-05T02:25:45Z

The rewriting of textbooks should not be compared to the collaborations on Wikipedia, which only goes by evidence.

The article was published in Indian Express on June 5, 2016.

I remember the first time I made an edit on Wikipedia — it was almost 10 years ago, and it was a heady feeling, to realise that here is a global encyclopaedia being written, and that I could be a part of it. It felt strange, because I was brought up to believe that authors are special people with specialised knowledge, which can only be validated from special institutions, and that authorship required years of practice and perseverance.

However, a historic experiment by Nature magazine showed, that despite the average age of the then Wikipedia editor as somewhere in the late teens, articles in Wikipedia were not any more prone to error than in other established, institutionalised fountains of knowledge like the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In fact, not only were the non-specialised editors of Wikipedia spot on with their knowledge outputs, but that because of its iterative nature, errors, once spotted on Wikipedia could be immediately corrected, thus leading to a more robust source of knowledge.

Two key principles helped Wikipedia establish this process of reliable and resilient knowledge systems — neutrality of viewpoint, and evidence-based knowledge. In the largely free and open space of Wikipedia editing, the one thing that remained constant is neutrality. Editors, despite their own biases, locations, contexts, experiences or embodied knowledges, could not introduce their opinions or original research into the Wikipedia articles. This necessarily meant that every truth and knowledge claim made in a Wikipedia article needs to be verified through a source. This source could come from different spaces and different formats, but it serves as objective evidence for the information being provided there. In instances — and there are thousands of them, if not more — where two editors disagreed on how to interpret an event, or how to describe a person or a thing, the edit-war was fuelled not by the I-said-You-said never-ending rhetoric, but by relying on the soundness of research conducted by external sources.

For some years now, Wikipedia has become the de facto global reference system, which still relies on volunteers and non-specialised editors to contribute to complex, complicated and very specialised domains of human knowledge production. Even when the editors are experts or scholars, their contribution has value and merit, only when it is supported by externally verifiable source that supports their view points.

Wikipedia has become one of the foundational models of the information web, that makes it clear that knowledge can be freely produced, consumed and circulated, and more importantly, it can be negotiated and contested, thereby making our scientific research practices relevant and pertinent beyond the hallowed and often closed halls of the university. Wikipedia became a prime example of how information can be revised, changed, mutated, updated, upcycled, and subjected to deep scrutiny as long as it is informed by an alignment towards neutrality and supported by evidence produced through research.

I invoke these principles that have fostered one of the most magnificent pieces of collaborative human effort because it directly puts into contrast the revisionist, biased, authoritative and closed practices by which the Indian educational councils seem to be editing textbooks. The removal of the names of historical figures, the rewriting of history to reflect a biased, narrow and unsubstantiated narrative, the erasure of alternative histories and voices of protest and dissent, and the false planting of information which is grounded in the school of “People say” and the university of “I have heard” is an alarming development. Many people unfortunately think of this political revisionism as mimicking the wisdom of the crowds recounting and contestation of information on spaces like Wikipedia.

It is important to note that these attempts at revising known facts and of producing religious histories of exclusion and violence are not the digital mode of information upcycling. These revisions are firmly rooted in a political agenda that seeks to sanctify the discriminatory violences of our neo-authoritarian governments. They remain challenged by the scholars in the field who have enough evidence — of archives, of tracts, of data, and of information — that show that this information is false. They are entrenched in the politics of power that insist that this is the only true account of things, excluding public discourse, and performing acts of censorship that discourage all access to scientific learning.

The proponents who want to Make in India, cannot limit their rhetoric only to economic production, but have to extend collaborative and connected making to knowledge and information production. And this entails the unmaking of these authoritarian and fascist attempts at justifying rumours as information, hate speech as free speech, and revisions as conversations.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/indian-express-june-5-2016-nishant-shah-digital-native-control-a-backspace

Digital Literacy Workshop at Department of Arts, Delhi University

nitika — 2013-03-05T01:03:05Z

A digital literacy workshop was organised at the Department of Arts, Delhi University for students pursuing their masters in Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies on February 5, 2013. Nitika Tandon shares the developments.

About 30 students and 4 faculty members attended the three hour long workshop. Surprisingly most participants had a clear understanding of how Wikipedia works, who writes the content, who are the Wikipedia editors, where do these editors come from, availability of Wikipedia in different Indian languages and many other aspects that participants are usually not aware of before most wikipedia outreach sessions. I was stunned and pleasantly surprised at the same time. I was then told that many of their fellow colleagues from Hindi department had already attended a session sometime last year and had briefed them about workings with Wikipedia. The main reason to organise this particular session was the curiosity to understand how does one actually 'edit' Wikipedia.

Mid way into the session we moved to the computer lab where all participants had access to computers, laptops and internet. A computer was shared by 2-3 participants because there were'nt enough machines. To begin with students were taught how to do basic and minor editing such as correcting spelling, grammar, punctuations, the importance of show preview button and writing an edit summary. Participants were then taught wiki mark up, adding references, adding inter-wiki links.

Towards the end of the session students filled in feedback forms with their contact information so that we could keep them updated on upcoming events and meetups that are being organised in the city. Many participants had questions about how to add table of contents, pictures and info box but there wasn't enough time to cover it all.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/digital-literacy-workshop

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education

praskrishna — 2013-06-07T11:30:29Z

The Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with HEIRA-CSCS, Tumkur University, CILHE-TISS and CCS (IISc) is hosting a one day Digital Humanities consultation on July 13, 2013 at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

Note: Following is a draft text which will be updated soon.

The digital age has had a huge impact on higher education in the last decade, transforming the modalities of both teaching and research. Consequently the very foundations of the systems of knowledge production and dissemination are being re-examined. This is due to the impact that the digital turn has had on already established systems, and to the exciting possibilities that it offers for radically transforming these systems. In tertiary education for instance, one of the ways in which the digital impact has made itself felt is to move the classroom online or to make resources freely available online, thereby providing access for new constituencies.

For researchers, digital archiving and digital publishing has made possible the same widening of access, while also enabling innovative ways of reading traditional objects of inquiry through the use of computational methods. While these developments are not confined to a specific domain of knowledge, the term most often used to reference them has been ‘Digital Humanities’. The term has gained currency worldwide perhaps because of the seeming incongruity of the relationship between the conventional humanities disciplines and what is deemed a technological development. This is a relationship that has not only produced new approaches to old material, but perhaps — even more significantly — reconfigured the objects and domains of inquiry themselves, and re-tooled the modes by which we conduct our research.

The five host institutions have engaged with each other in different collaborative initiatives over the years. Most significant among them have been (a) the exploration of integration, inter-disciplinarity and dialogue between the natural sciences and the social sciences/humanities; and (b) the production and deployment of critical resources in Indian languages in the higher education sector. We seek to bring these interests together in the proposed consultation aimed at setting agendas for digital humanities in India.

Exploring the possible connections between the human sciences and the digital domain could throw up many productive directions for the higher education system. One of the biggest challenges facing the system in India today is the issue of access and the quality of that access. In the coming decade, Indian higher education is estimated to achieve a Gross Enrolment Ratio of at least 20% (from the existing 12%). This immense new inflow into the education system poses significant institutional and pedagogic challenges. With English emerging as the global language for knowledge production, there is pressure on the Indian higher education system to move towards English-based teaching and learning. Simultaneously, here is a cognitive issue: of effective comprehension. Students who are first-generation learners are finding it increasingly difficult to negotiate with the English-only curriculum that presents itself to many as an insurmountable hurdle.

A new set of possibilities could open up if one were to examine this issue from the perspective of the Indian languages. For over 150 years these languages have been used in all modern institutions and practices (from banking to statecraft) and have developed their own concept ecologies and rich traditions of public intellectual discourse. Currently these languages and practices are being thrust into the background by the globalization of higher education. Re-inserting them into our classrooms and institutional arrangements would be crucial from two perspectives: a) providing newer avenues for students to re-negotiate curricular content which is predominantly in English and b) infusing new source materials into social, political, economic and cultural research on India, thereby increasing the relevance and dynamism of Indian social sciences and humanities. Needless to say, technology will play a major role in this context. Not only will technology figure prominently in addressing the question of access, equity and outreach, it will also help in bringing hitherto inaccessible intellectual resources into easily available and distributable forms. Also crucial to the question of access is the scalability that digital technology offers.

Through this interdisciplinary consultation, we hope to chart out the possible directions for digital humanities in India, which would include, among others, a strong engagement with Indian languages as well as a rethinking of how the sciences and the humanities could intersect. All of this is likely to hold paradigm-changing consequences for higher education: involving for example online learning, technologically enhanced learning, archival practices, new research methodologies, and the production of new and locally relevant knowledges.

We invite participants to make short presentations of 15 minutes each reflecting on the questions raised in this note, and bringing to the table issues raised by the initiatives in which they have taken part so far.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/digital-humanities-for-indian-higher-education

Did Sibal just get arm-twisted by book publishers?

praskrishna — 2012-05-28T06:08:57Z

The publishing industry seems to have got the better of the Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal. Pranesh Prakash's article on parallel importation of books is referred in this article published in FirstPost on May 25, 2012.

The move to open up the market for distribution of international books to competition has been successfully thwarted with the removal of an amendment allowing parallel imports from the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2012 that was passed by the Lok Sabha on 22 May.

This despite the Parliamentary Standing Committee supporting the amendment on the grounds that it will increase student access to books.

But it could well only be a temporary victory for the publishing giants with Sibal promising to restore the amendment if the National Council of Applied Economic Research – to which the matter has been referred – should in its report (expected in August) recommend parallel imports.

The draft bill (which included the amendment) had created a furore in publishing circles last year. Parallel imports, claimed leading publishing houses, would destroy the industry. Read Thomas Abraham’s Death of Books published last year in The Hindustan Times.

While that remains open for debate, there is no denying the larger common good of faster and cheaper availability of books to millions of students that parallel imports will make possible. Ordering books may no longer be a click away if Flipkart had to take permission from the Indian copyright owner every time you ordered an international title.

In an article titled Why Parallel Importation of Books should be Allowed published by The Centre for Internet and Society Pranesh Prakash makes a compelling case for ending the distribution monopoly.

Underlying the huge benefit to students, the author says “Currently a large percentage of educational books in India are imported, but with different companies having monopoly rights in importation of different books. If this was opened up to competition, the prices of books would drop, since one would not need to get an authorisation to import books—the licence raj that currently exists would be dismantled—and Indian students will benefit.

“This is especially important for students and for libraries because even when low-priced editions are available, they are often of older editions.”

The article also argues how the business model of hugely popular site such as Flipkart depends on parallel imports to deliver books to its customers at great bargains.

Allowing parallel imports, argues the author, will dismantle distribution monopoly rights and help book publishers, libraries, the print-disabled and consumers in general. He also makes the important distinction between the black market and parallel imports, which is legal.

Offering a point-by-point rebuttal of the publishing industry’s claims of the destructive impact of parallel imports, the author observes “It seems to us that the publishing industry – especially foreign publishers with distributorship in India – don’t want to open themselves up to competition in the distribution market and are opposing this most commendable move.”

He concludes that allowing parallel imports will, in fact, result in an expansion of the reading market.

“It is mainly foreign publishers’ monopoly rights over distribution which will be harmed by this amendment, while Indian publishers, Indian authors, and Indian readers, especially students, will stand to gain. Furthermore, in the long run, even foreign publishers will stand to gain due to market expansion. Any legitimate worries that publishers may have are better dealt with under other laws (such as the Customs Act) and not the Copyright Act.”

Read the original from FirstPost.India

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/did-sibal-just-get-arm-twisted-by-book-publishers

Dictionary words in software patent guidelines puzzle industry

praskrishna — 2013-09-04T06:20:24Z

Terms not defined in draft guidelines on patents for computer-related inventions leaves room for misinterpretation

The article by C.H.Unnikrishnan was published in Livemint on August 26, 2013. The Centre for Internet and Society's work on access to knowledge is mentioned.

Could the simple Latin phrase, per se, which translates as “in itself”, lead to confusion in verifying whether a computer-related invention deserves a patent or not? Some members of the $108 billion Indian information technology industry, intellectual property (IP) law firms and anti-patent lobby groups say it can.

The inclusion of some terms that are not defined by local laws in the government’s draft guidelines on patents for computer-related inventions (CRIs) leaves room for ambiguity and misinterpretation when examiners grant or reject such a patent, they say. The guidelines were released in early August.

The terms include ‘per se’, algorithm, hardware, firmware —and CRI itself.

CRI “has not been defined in any of the Indian statutes and is construed to mean, for the purpose of these guidelines, any invention which involves the use of computers, computer networks or other programmable apparatus and includes such inventions, one or more features of which are realized wholly or partially by means of a computer programme/programmes”, the Indian Patent Office (IPO) acknowledged in the draft guidelines, and called for feedback from industry stakeholders by 8 August.

	Patent examination is the most crucial function performed by a patent office. An examiner verifies the invention claims made by an applicant by relying on scientific parameters, industrial applicability and previously known technologies, among others, to decide whether the claims are genuine and deserve a patent. IPO’s draft guidelines are aimed at helping examiners in this task. However, with new technologies, the task of granting or rejecting patents has become tougher, as acknowledged by the patent office, in its draft guidelines. The confusion is only compounded with the inclusion of dictionary terms such as per se. The Indian Patent Law does not contain any specific provision regarding the protection of computer software that includes programs, musical and artistic works, studio and video recordings, databases and preparation material and associated documents such as manuals. India does not grant pure software patents (i.e., a patent over a “computer programme per se”).

Patent examination is the most crucial function performed by a patent office. An examiner verifies the invention claims made by an applicant by relying on scientific parameters, industrial applicability and previously known technologies, among others, to decide whether the claims are genuine and deserve a patent.

IPO’s draft guidelines are aimed at helping examiners in this task. However, with new technologies, the task of granting or rejecting patents has become tougher, as acknowledged by the patent office, in its draft guidelines. The confusion is only compounded with the inclusion of dictionary terms such as per se.

The Indian Patent Law does not contain any specific provision regarding the protection of computer software that includes programs, musical and artistic works, studio and video recordings, databases and preparation material and associated documents such as manuals. India does not grant pure software patents (i.e., a patent over a “computer programme per se”).

Software, instead, is protected by the Copyright Law, similar to literary and aesthetic works.

In the feedback, a copy which was reviewed by Mint, India’s largest software services exporter Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), said it “is happy to note that IPO is taking the right steps in the direction of protecting inventions...Moving from the notion of ‘Computer Implemented Invention’ to ‘Computer Related Invention’ itself is a positive shift...”

	“Primary objective of the CRI guidelines, as expected and understood by the stakeholders, is to deliberate on the meaning of “per se” in Section 3(k) for Software Inventions with example pertaining to Software Inventions and not interpret them to be the Hardware-led inventions,” said TCS in its feedback. It added that “while examining the technical character of a CRI, mere usage of the words such as enterprise, business, business rules, supply-chain, order, sales, transactions, commerce, payment, etc. in the (patent) claims should not lead to conclusion of the CRI being just a ‘Business Method’ without any technical character. These terminologies actually qualify the contextual utility and fitment of the inventions..”

“Primary objective of the CRI guidelines, as expected and understood by the stakeholders, is to deliberate on the meaning of “per se” in Section 3(k) for Software Inventions with example pertaining to Software Inventions and not interpret them to be the Hardware-led inventions,” said TCS in its feedback.

It added that “while examining the technical character of a CRI, mere usage of the words such as enterprise, business, business rules, supply-chain, order, sales, transactions, commerce, payment, etc. in the (patent) claims should not lead to conclusion of the CRI being just a ‘Business Method’ without any technical character. These terminologies actually qualify the contextual utility and fitment of the inventions..”

According to Rajiv Kumar Choudhari, a lawyer specializing in IT patent law, a computer program is software ‘per se’ because there may be no transformation of data/signal/input, or there is no tangible benefit to the device if this software is run on the device. “The benefit to the device may be in terms of efficiency, or increase/decrease in certain attributes,” he said in a blog in SpicyIP where he analyzed software patenting position in India earlier.

In such cases, if the applicant fails to define the exact benefit to the device in a tangible manner, the examiner may refuse to grant a patent. In January 2012, for instance, the Delhi patent office rejected a software patent application filed by Netomat Inc., on grounds that it did not fulfil the requirement of Section 3(k).

According to section 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act, “a mathematical or business method or computer programs per se or algorithms” are not inventions.

Between 2006 and 2011, the latest available data, 34,967 IT patent applications were filed with the Indian patent office. It granted about 5,594 patents during the same period.

“We hope that through this consultation (feedback) the prevailing evaluation methods for computer related inventions will become more efficient and encourage the Industry to file and protect their IP. However, we have some major concerns related to the draft guidelines,” said Nassom, the country’s software lobby body.

Overall, the guidelines appear to be “restrictive and may be a hindrance to grant of patents in India, even when such rights would be granted in other countries like Europe, Japan, etc,” said Nasscom, adding that “over a period of time”, it will discourage innovative activities from being carried out in India.

For instance, Nasscom pointed out that since the patent office has not defined ‘per se’, the phrase “computer program per se” should mean a set of instructions by itself or computer program by itself. “This meaning is generally accepted even in the UK and before the EPO (European Patent Office),” it added. The software lobby body has suggested that the scope of the “per se” limitation in Section 3(k) should be changed to cover hardware features, irrespective of whether the features are novel or not.

The guidelines, said Nasscom, seem to imply that for computer program-related claims to be allowed, the software needs to be “machine specific”, which “will unfortunately exclude patent protection for any computer-implemented invention designed to be interoperable across platforms, and not specific to a machine”.

In its feedback to the patent office, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), an organization that works on Internet privacy-related issues, underscored the complexity that new technologies could introduce by citing the example of CRIs in the field of data storage.

The first compact disc (CD) was invented in 1982, the digital video disc (DVD) in 1995 and the flash drive in 1999.

“While each of these inventions was far superior to their predecessor, the time between each incremental innovation has drastically reduced,” CIS noted in its feedback

“If an invention can become obsolete in as little as 2 years, it would make little sense to grant monopoly rights for 20 years. So even if a CRI passes the three tests of novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability, it needs to be evaluated from the perspective of its possible obsolescence. In such a scenario, the examiner should look at the history of innovation in that particular field to ascertain that the invention does not become obsolete in a short time.”

Also consider for instance the term, “business methods”. It involves a whole gamut of activities in a commercial or industrial enterprise relating to transaction of goods or services but “the claims are at times drafted not directly as business methods but apparently with hitherto available technical features such as Internet, networks, satellites, tele-communications, etc”, the draft stated.

“The exclusions are carved out for all business methods and, therefore, if in substance the claims relate to business method even with the help of technology, they are not considered patentable,” the guidelines added.

The Japan intellectual Property Association, in its reaction to the India’s new CRI patenting guidelines, also noted that recent computers, including processors or memories, mostly do not rely on any specific programs.

“In addition, software-related inventions should be patentable originally for their functioning on the basis of novel computer programs in combination with general purpose devices. However, these computer-related inventions would be excluded from protection under the new standards for patentability,” it cautioned.

The draft guidelines “have interpreted and applied Section 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act 1970 in a more restrictive way to conclude as to what is patentable, which is a cause of concern to various stakeholders”, said Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FICCI) in its reaction.

Software patents remain an emotive issue.

Their proponents argue that patents promote investment in research and development, accelerate software development by making previously unknown and not obvious software inventions public and protect IP of software companies. They also encourage the creation of software companies and jobs and increase the valuation of small companies, the proponents add.

Critics counter that traditional copyright has provided sufficient protection to facilitate massive investment in software development and that most software patents cover either trivial inventions or inventions that would have been obvious to persons of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made.

Globally, patents in the IT and software sector are being revisited due to litigation and compensation claims over misuse of patents including the much-hyped patent battle of Apple Inc. with Samsung Electronics and Google Inc. with Microsoft Corp.

In June 2008, technology companies including Google, Intel Corp, Oracle Corp, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard Co. set up the ‘Allied Security Trust’ to address the risk of patent-infringement suits by buying those patents which they feel are most important to their businesses.

AST has 26 members from Europe, North America and Asia. It buys patents that its members have expressed interest from the patent holder, and the cost would be deducted from those companies’ Escrow accounts. AST argues that non-practicing entities, or NPEs, also known as patent trolls, produce no products or services of their own, and yet acquire patents—sometimes hundreds of them—with the sole intention of asserting their right and conduct patent litigation to extract settlements or licensing fees.

In 2008, AST estimated that it costs operating companies an average of $3.2 million through the end of discovery and $5.2 million through trial to defend cases in which there is more than $25 million at stake.

The costs of determining if a particular piece of software infringes any issued patents are too high and the results too are uncertain. A software patent costs, on average, around $20,000, it said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-august-26-2013-ch-unnikrishnan-dictionary-words-in-software-patent-guidelines-puzzle-industry