Centre for Internet and Society

11th Century Kannada Literature Now on Wikisource

subha — 2014-04-06T05:01:14Z

This blog post by Pavithra Hanchagaiah and Omshivaprakash HI was edited by Rohini Lakshane for DNA. It was first edited by Subhashish Panigrahi, CIS-A2K on the Wikimedia Foundation blog where it was first published.

Click to read the post republished on DNA on March 30, 2014. The original posted on Wikimedia Blog can be seen here.

In Kannada poetry, Vachana Sahitya is a form of rhythmic writing that evolved in the eleventh century and flourished in the twelevth, as a part of the “Lingayatha” movement. More than 259 Vachanakaras (Vachana writers) have compiled over 11,000 vachanas. 21,000 of these verses, which were published in the 15-volume “Samagra Vachana Samputa” by the government of Karnataka have been digitised. Two Wikimedians, along with a Kannada linguist and author O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy, are involved in the Unicode conversions, corrections and writing preface for these verses. The entire work is now available as a standalone project called “Vachana Sanchaya” and ready to enrich Kannada Wikisource.

This project was started a year ago when Kannada Wikimedian Omshivaprakash was trying to help Professor O.L. Naghabhushana Swamy and Kannada author and publisher Vasudhendra access the vachana (verses) of Vachana Sanchaya. Swamy had trouble using publicly available content on Vachanas since the data was in ASCII standard and searching the text was a huge problem. I (Pavithra Hanchagaiah) started to help gather information about vachanas and document it in Unicode by writing scripts for open source software. Further discussions were made to get thousands of vachanas in the form of a database, so that they could be made easily searchable with an index. This demanded that we build a platform supporting all these activities, which would help the linguistic researchers, students and members of the general public who have an interest in reading and studying Vachana literature. With this idea, Omshivaprakash started designing the model, and his colleague Devaraju started building it. In the meantime I was running various scripts to fix errors in conversion of ASCII text to Unicode, confirming that the data was ready to consume by the modules developed for concordance. We spent weekends and holidays executing this project from home. With the constant feedback and guidance from Mr Swamy and Vasudendra, we learnt how concordance of text is used by researchers and what would make it easier for them to research on Vachana Sahitya. Omshivaprakash worked on the architecture of the platform, decided the infrastructure requirements – free and open source software technologies were used to keep the platform active while managing the entire project. I provided critical hacks for digitization and gave feedback through suggestions.

Working System

Currently, the system has around 200,000 unique words in its repository. Vachana Sanchaya is meant for research rather than just a repository of text on the web. While you search the words on our system, you can see who has used the word in all Vachanas. To make the research more readable, we highlight the text searched in each Vachana that would be displayed. To repeat the search for a specific Vachanakara (poet) you just need to click on his name on the graph on the results page. We have used MediaWiki’s jquery-ime input tool architecture that helped us provide a feature to directly enter Kannada text in Unicode for searches. So just type, and get results!

Public Response

We are glad to see people accessing vachanas from our Facebook, Twitter and Google+ channels. There have been approximately 500,000 pageviews to our site in the first few months of our platform’s public launch. Interestingly, commonly searched Kannada words like “ಕರ್ಮ”(Karma en:Work/Deed) , “ಸತ್ಯ” (Sathya -en:Truthfulness ) and “ನದಿ” (River) have resulted in quick and easy results.

Plans for the Future

Our system is extensible with respect to adding new feature – we have a review desk for researchers to help us with the review of content. Later we will also be adding required references to Vachanas from various research works that have been done around this literature. The content is available to the public through OpenData API and will be distributed as public domain through Wikisource once the review work is complete. This will open up the system for students, developers, researchers and anyone interested in working around building linguistic tools for Kannada and other Indic languages. This system is meant to evolves around other works rather than having to change and re-invent the wheel for more such projects. Vachana Sahitya will further help us to initiate Natural Language Processing (NLP) projects if more researchers get together to tag the words, glossary etc in the coming days. We can also fulfill the need of various language tools like spelling and grammar checker for users through crowd-sourcing the development. The next projects under the “Kannada Sanchaya” are Sarvagnana Vachanagalu and Dāsa Sanchaya which are in the pipeline with initial phases of work underway. Our idea is to extend this platform from Vyasa to Muddanna and possibly the contemporary literature work available in the public domain.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dna-march-30-2014-rohini-lakshane-11th-century-kannada-literature-now-on-wikisource

Emphasis on developing vernacular encyclopaedias

praskrishna — 2014-04-15T10:22:04Z

emphasis-on-developing-vernacular-encyclopaedias.

This article published in the Hindu on March 30, 2014 quotes Rehmanuddin Sheikh.

It is imperative to make efforts to develop encyclopaedias in all vernacular languages, S. Rehmanuddin, programme officer, Centre of Internet Society - Access To Knowledge, said.

In a guest lecture on Telugu Wikipedia organised by the Computer Science department in JNTU College of Engineering, Pulivendula, he explained the way Wikipedia works - the wiki model and the Wiki mark-up language.

Students were also told about the workings of the media wiki framework, which forms the backend of Wikipedia and several similar projects.

Head of Computer Science, A. Suresh Babu, explained that the guest lecture was organised to enlighten CSE students about Wikipedia, the largest encyclopaedia ever.

It is the biggest multilingual textual source with over three crore articles in 287 languages including Telugu, students were told.

It has over four million articles on various topics ranging from arts to mythology and science to advanced computing, he added.

He explained to the participants about Media wiki API that would help them understand web services and create applications based on the API data.

IT will help them to create data-driven projects in future, he said.

Automation of tasks in the form of running bot scripts were also demonstrated during the lecture.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-march-30-2014-emphasis-on-developing-vernacular-encyclopaedias

Community Capacity Building Workshop at KIIT University

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T05:22:17Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team is organizing a workshop for community capacity building at KIIT University on March 30, 2014.

Experienced Wikimedians and Subhashish Panigrahi from CIS-A2K mentored the community about community building strategies and outreach. They had a discussion about the further steps with students (graduating batch) of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Dhenkanal who took part in the Odia Wikipedia Education program. Finally there was a discussion on CIS-A2K's Odia language work plan for Wikipedia and WikiSource.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/community-capacity-building-workshop-at-kiit

Odisha 2014: Coverage in Odisha Samay

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T05:48:13Z

Odisha Samay published a report of the Odisha 2014 event on March 30, 2014.


Above: A scanned version of the report published in Odisha Samay on March 30, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odishasamay-march-30-2014-odisha-2014-coverage

Odia Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T05:29:02Z

The article was published in the Telegraph on March 29, 2014. Subhashish Panigrahi spoke about the Odia Wikipedia plan.

Odia Wikipedia community recently celebrated Odisha Day at Jayadev Bhavan. Inaugurating the event, linguist Debiprasanna Pattanayak said that that most of the Odia publications were not available on the Internet and readers were devoid of easy access to those. He discussed the process of digitisation for preserving valuable books that are out of print.

Odia wikipedia has been trying to popularise use of the language on the Internet since 2002. The aim of the gathering was to enrich the online encyclopaedia and get more books digitised. Eleven volumes of works of Jagannath Mohanty were released on the occasion.

The Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences will digitise these books by training their students.

Guests released a DVD containing a new Odia Unicode font designed by www. odialanguage. com.

Subhashish Panigrahi from the Centre for Internet and Society read out the annual report and the vision of Odia wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-telegraph-march-29-2014-odia-wikipedia

Odia Wikimedia community celebrated Odisha day, bringing 14 copyright free Odia books

praskrishna — 2014-04-04T12:25:46Z

Odia Wikimedia community has celebrated “Odisha day” today at Jayadev Bhawan. Inaugurating this event eminent linguist Padmashree Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak said, 'Collaborative effort and open access to knowledge repositories will enrich our language an culture'.

This was published in Odishadiary on March 29, 2014.

Odia Wikipedia has been trying to popularize use of Odia language in the Internet since 2002.

To enrich the online encyclopedia and getting more books digitized Wikipedians are organizing a two day event. Along with Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak, Professor Udayanath Sahu, The Odisha Review's editor Dr. Lenin Mohanty, Odisha Bhaskar's editor Pradosh Pattnaik, language researcher Subrat Prusty, Kalinga Institute of Social Science (KISS)'s principal Dr. Madan Mohan Sahu, Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa's chairman Allhadmohini Mohanty along with the trust's secretary Brajamohan Patnaik and senior members Sarojkanta Choudhury and Shisira Ranjan Dash.

11 volumes of eminent Odia writer Dr. Jagannath Mohanty were released in free Creative Commons licenses. KISS will be digitizing these books by training their students. Allhadmohini Mohanty formally gave written permission to Odia Wikimedia community for releasing and digitizing these books. Guests released a DVD containing a new Odia Unicode free font designed by OdiaLanguage.com, a new Odia input tool, free softwares and offline Wikipedia.

It was declared that the Odia WikiSource project will be active soon. Odia Wikipedia admin Mrutyunjaya Kar gave the inaugural speech. Subhashish Panigrahi from the Centre for Internet and Society read the annual report and vision of Odia Wikipedia. Chief guest Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak discussed about the efforts being laid for bringing Odia language as the sixth Indian classical language. Majority of the Odia publications are not available on the internet and readers are devoid of easily accessible. He discussed about the process of digitization for preserving valuable books that are out of print and the old palm lead manuscripts.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/orissa-diary-march-29-2014-odia-wikimedia-community-celebrated-odisha-day-bringing-14-copyright-free-odia-books

Odia Wikipedia Brings 14 Copyright Free Odia Books and a Free Odia Font

praskrishna — 2014-04-06T06:18:22Z

Odia Wikimedia community has celebrated "Odisha Day" today at Jayadev Bhawan.

Subhashish Panigrahi from the Centre for Internet and Society read the annual report and shared the vision of the Wikimedia movement.

Read the complete story published by Odishabarta on March 29, 2014 here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odishabarta-march-29-2014-odia-wikipedia-brings-14-copyright-free-odia-books-and-free-odia-font

‘Digitisation only way to preserve valuable literature for posterity’

praskrishna — 2014-04-04T12:40:33Z

Digitization is the only way to ensure preservation of valuable Odia books and old palm-leaf manuscripts for posterity, said eminent linguist Padmashri Dr Debiprasanna Pattanayak while inaugurating the two-day Odisha Day celebration organized by the Odia Wikimedia Community at Jayadev Bhawan here today.

The article was published in Odisha Sun Times on March 29, 2014. Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

“Collaborative effort and open access to knowledge repositories can help enrich our language and culture”, Dr. Pattanayak said while taking part in the deliberations. He lamented the fact that the majority of current Odia publications are not available on the net.

Among others, Prof Udayanath Sahu, the editor of Odisha Review Lenin Mohanty, editor, Odisha Bhaskar, Pradosh Pattnaik, language researcher, Subrat Prusty from Kalinga Institute of Social Science (KISS) and principal Dr Madan Mohan Sahu, Allhadmohini Mohanty, chairman, Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa along with the Trust’s secretary Brajamohan Patnaik, senior members Sarojkanta Choudhury and Shisira Ranjan Dash took part in the deliberations.

11 volumes of eminent Odia writer Dr Jagannath Mohanty were released in free Creative Commons licenses. Besides, a DVD containing a new Odia Unicode free font designed by www.OdiaLanguage.com a new Odia input tool, free software and offline Wikipedia were also released on the occasion.

KISS will digitize these books by training its students, the organisers said.

Odia Wikipedia admin Mrutyunjaya Kar gave the inaugural speech while Subhashish Panigrahi from the Centre for Internet and Society read out the annual report and the vision of Odia Wikipedia.

It was announced that the Odia WikiSource project will be activated soon.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odishasuntimes-march-29-2014-digitisation-only-way-to-preserve-valuable-literature-for-posterity

Telugu Wikipedia at JNTUACEP

praskrishna — 2014-04-15T11:13:00Z

CIS along with the Department of Computer Science, JNTUACEP invite you to a Telugu Wikipedia workshop on March 28, 2014.

Rahmanuddin Shaik, Program Officer from CIS-A2K participates in the event as a speaker.

10.00 10.30	సుస్వాగతం మరియు పరిచయం
10.30 15.00	వికీపీడియా ఒక అవగాహన, వికీపీడియా ఎలాపనిచేస్తుంది ?
15.00 15.30	వికీపీడియా ప్రదర్శన+ వికీలో రాయడం (hands on activity)
15.30 15.45	తేనీటి విరామం
15.45 18.15	Basics of Wikipedia Editing (Hands on activity) – LAB SESSION- వికీలో రాయడం ఎలా మొదలుపెట్టాలి, వనరుల ఉపయోగం
18.15 18.30	Feedback and Closing Session

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/telugu-wiki-jntuacep

Odisha Day 2014

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T04:39:56Z

CIS-A2K in collaboration with the Odia Wikipedia community is organizing this event on March 29, 2014 at Jayadev Bhawan, Bhubaneswar.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/odisha-day-2014

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

Sessions on Kannada Wikipedia at Tumkur University

praskrishna — 2014-04-06T04:50:42Z

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted a session on Kannada Wikipedia for students of M.Sc. Library and Information Sciences followed by an advanced Kannada Wikipedia session for students of M.A. Literature on March 27, 2014. The event was organized by Tumkur University.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/sessions-on-kannada-wikipedia-tumkur-university

Odia Wikipedia to digitize 14 books

praskrishna — 2014-04-04T10:40:56Z

On the occasion of the 79th Odisha Day, the Odia Wikipedia has decided to take up a new project for the digitization of 11 books of the eminent Odia author Dr Jagannath Mohanty.

The article was published in the Odisha Sun Times Bureau on March 27, 2014. Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

On the occasion of the 79th Odisha Day, the Odia Wikipedia has decided to take up a new project for the digitization of 11 books of the eminent Odia author Dr Jagannath Mohanty.

In a release, programme officer (Access to Knowledge) of Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru Subhashish Panigrahi said the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) would take up the digitization project where KISS students would type them on WikiSource, a sister project of Wikipedia.

These books include children’s literature, travelogues and biographical essays penned by Dr Mohanty.

Digitization of three more books: two in Odia-”Jati, Jagruti O Pragati” (book on people and culture of Odisha), “Bhasa O Jatiyata in Odia” ( a book based on research on Odia language) and an English book on the literary heritage of Odia, “Classical Odia” will be also be inaugurated on this day.

All these digitised books will be made available on the Internet with open access through free licenses. More than 5000 pages will be digitized in these two projects, Panigrahi said.

He said several public and private organizations have started taking the effort seriously after Odia got classical status recently.

Stating that the Odia language is lagging behind since it is not being accessed and used by the people due to the relatively inadequate and low content, Panigrahi said there is a great need for making content available in regional languages for a better sharing of knowledge with the new generations.

With a view to discussing the need for many new tools and technological advancement, a seminar would be held at Jayadev Bhawan in the city here on March 29.

Prof Udayanath Sahu, writer Asit Mohanty, litterateur Dr Lenin Mohanty would participate and discuss about spell check for Odia, use of Odia language in the media and tools for typing in Odia.

It may be mentioned that the Odia Wikipedia has become a useful tool to access vast amount of knowledge in Odia.

Available for free at https://or.wikipedia.org , it is an online encyclopedia that has about 5000 articles. Unlike conventional encyclopedias anyone can create and edit Wikipedia articles by abiding few basic guidelines.

About 20 Wikipedians are contributing articles on diverse topics. Wikipedia has a self correcting mechanism of experienced editors guiding new ones to proofread and correct language and add citations.

So far, about 25 outreach programs have been organized in over 10 educational and community organizations to educate people \with two Wikipedia education programmes running for 3-4 months.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odisha-sun-times-odia-wikipedia-digitize-14-books

ଓଡ଼ିଶା ଦିବସ: ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ଭିତ୍ତିରେ ରାଜ୍ୟ ଗଠନର ୭୯ ବର୍ଷ

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T08:30:47Z

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ସମ୍ପାଦକମାନଙ୍କ ତରଫରୁ ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱରଠାରେ ଏହି ୨୯ ତାରିଖରେ “ଓଡ଼ିଶା ଦିବସ ୨୦୧୪” ପାଳନ କରାଯାଉଛି ।

Click to read the original published in Odishan.com on March 27, 2014.

ଏହି ଦିନ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଶିଶୁ ସାହିତ୍ୟିକ ଡଃ ଜଗନ୍ନାଥ ମହାନ୍ତିଙ୍କ ୧୧ ଖଣ୍ଡ ପୁସ୍ତକର ଡିଜିଟାଲ ରୂପ ପ୍ରସ୍ତୁତ କରିବା ନିମନ୍ତେ ଏକ ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପର ଆରମ୍ଭ କରାଯିବ । ପାଖାପାଖି ୩୦୦୦ ପୃଷ୍ଠା ଡିଜିଟାଇଜ ହେବାକୁ ଥିବା ଏହି ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପଟି କଳିଙ୍ଗ ଇନଷ୍ଟିଚ୍ୟୁଟ ଅଫ ସୋସିଆଲ ସାଇନ୍ସେସ (କିସ) ତରଫରୁ ସ୍କୁଲ ପିଲାଙ୍କ ଦ୍ୱାରା ଛାତ୍ରଛାତ୍ରୀମାନଙ୍କ ଦ୍ୱାରା ଆଗାମୀ କିଛି ମାସ ଭିତରେ ଆରମ୍ଭ କରାଯିବ । ଏହି ବ‌ହିଗୁଡ଼ିକ ମଧ୍ୟରେ ରହିଛି କିଛି ଶିଶୁସାହିତ୍ୟ ବହି, ଡଃ ମହାନ୍ତିଙ୍କ ଆମୋଦଦାୟକ ଅନେକ ଭ୍ରମଣ କାହାଣୀ ଓ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଶିଶୁସାହିତ୍ୟର ଇତିହାସ । ଏହି ଦିନ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅଧ୍ୟୟନ ଓ ଗବେଷଣା ସଂସ୍ଥା ଦ୍ୱାରା ପ୍ରକାଶିତ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ଓ ଜନଜୀବନର ସମ୍ପୂର୍ଣ୍ଣ ଇତିହାସ ସଂକଳିତ ତିନୋଟି ବହି-”ଜାତି, ଜାଗୃତି ଓ ପ୍ରଗତି”, “ଭାଷା ଓ ଜାତୀୟତା” ଓ ଏକ ଇଂରାଜୀ ବହି “Classical Odia”କୁ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ କରାଇବା ନିମନ୍ତେ ଆଉ ଏକ ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପର ଶୁଭାରମ୍ଭ କରାଯିବ । ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ଅନେକ ପୁସ୍ତକ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ନ ଥିବା ପାଠକମାନଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ତଥ୍ୟ ଖୋଜିବା ଓ ଜ୍ଞାନ ଆହରଣ ପାଇଁ ଏକ ବିଶାଳ ପ୍ରତିବନ୍ଧକ ବୋଲି ବିଶିଷ୍ଠ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାବିଦ ପଦ୍ମଶ୍ରୀ ଡଃ ଦେବୀପ୍ରସାଦ ପଟ୍ଟନାୟକ କହିଛନ୍ତି । ଆଗରୁ ସୃଜନିକା ଅନୁଷ୍ଠାନ ତରଫରୁ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ପାଖାପାଖି ୭୪୦ ଖଣ୍ଡ ପୁରାତନ ପୁସ୍ତକର ଡିଜିଟାଲ ସଂସ୍କରଣ ପ୍ରସ୍ତୁତ କରାଯାଇଥିଲେ ମଧ୍ୟ କେବଳ ସ୍କାନ କରାଯାଇଥିବା ଏହି ସମସ୍ତ ପୁସ୍ତକର ଲେଖାସବୁ ଖୋଜିବା ସମ୍ଭବ ନୁହେଁ । ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ତରଫରୁ ବିଭିନ୍ନ ଶିକ୍ଷାନୁଷ୍ଠାନର ଛାତ୍ରଛାତ୍ରୀମାନଙ୍କୁ ନେଇ କର୍ମଶାଳା ମାଧ୍ୟମରେ ଏହି ଉପାଦେୟ ବହିକୁ ପୁନଃ-ଟାଇପ କରି ମାଗଣାରେ ବିନା କପିରାଇଟରେ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ପାଠକମାନଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ ରଖାଯିବ । ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଏଥିନିମନ୍ତେ ଉଇକି-ପାଠାଗାର ନାମକ ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ ବ୍ୟବହାର କରାଯିବ ।

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ଭାଷାର ମାନ୍ୟତା ପାଇବା ପରେ ସରକାର ଓ ଅନେକ ସଙ୍ଗଠନମାନଙ୍କ ତରଫରୁ ଭାଷାର ବିକାଶ ନିମନ୍ତେ ଅନେକ ନୂଆ ନୂଆ ଯୋଜନା ଆରମ୍ଭ ହୋଇଛି । ତେବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ଲେଖାମାନ ଏବେ ମଧ୍ୟ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଅନେକ ପରିମାଣରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ଯାହା ବିଶ୍ୱଦରବାରରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆର ସ୍ଥିତିକୁ ଯଥେଷ୍ଟ ଦୁର୍ବଳ କରିରଖିଛି । ବର୍ତ୍ତମାନର ଅନେକ ଶିଶୁ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରୁ ଶିଖିବା ପସନ୍ଦ କଲେଣି ଯାହା ଭାଷା ଶିକ୍ଷଣର ମାଧ୍ୟମରେ ବିରାଟ ପରିବର୍ତ୍ତନର ଆବଶ୍ୟକତାକୁ ଦୃଢ଼ୀଭୂତ କରିଛି । ଏହି ସମସ୍ତ ବିଷୟକୁ ଆଖିରେ ରଖି ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ବନାନ ସୁଧାରିବା, ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଗଣମାଧ୍ୟମରେ ଓ ଅନ୍ୟନ୍ୟ ମାଧ୍ୟମ ଭାଷାର ବିକାଶରେ କି କି ପଦଃକ୍ଷେପ ନେଇପାରିବେ ସେ ବାବଦରେ ପ୍ରଫେସର ଉଦୟନାଥ ସାହୁ, ବରିଷ୍ଠ ସାମ୍ବାଦିକ ସମ୍ପଦ ମହାପାତ୍ର, ଓଡ଼ିଶା ରିଭିଉ ପତ୍ରିକାର ସମ୍ପାଦକ ଓ ସାହିତ୍ୟିକ ଡଃ ଲେନିନ ମହାନ୍ତି ପ୍ରମୁଖ ଆଲୋଚନା କରିବେ ।

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ or.wikipedia.org ଠାରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ଏକ ଅନଲାଇନ ଜ୍ଞାନକୋଷ । ଏଥିରେ ଅନ୍ୟ ଜ୍ଞାନକୋଷ ଭଳି କିଛି ହାତଗଣତି ସମ୍ପାଦକ ନଥାଏ ଏଥିରେ ସମସ୍ତଙ୍କୁ ସମ୍ପାଦନାର ସୁବିଧା ଦିଆଯାଇଥାଏ । ତେବେ କେତେକ ନୀତିନିୟମ ଦ୍ୱାରା ଏଥିରେ ଅଦରକାରୀ ଲେଖା ସବୁକୁ ଅଭିଜ୍ଞ ସମ୍ପାଦକମାନେ ସୁଧାରିଥାନ୍ତି । ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଅଧୁନା ୨୦ ଜଣ ସମ୍ପାଦକ ସକ୍ରିୟ ଭାବେ ଓଡ଼ିଶାର ଭାଷା, କଳା, ଲୋକସଂସ୍କୃତି ଓ ଜଗତର ବାକି ଅନେକ ବିଷୟରେ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗମାନ ସ୍ୱେଚ୍ଛାରେ ସମ୍ପାଦନା କରୁଛନ୍ତି । ୫୦୦୦ ଗୋଟି ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗରେ ସମୃଦ୍ଧ ପ୍ରଥମ ଭାରତୀୟ ଭାଷାର ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ ଭାବେ ବାକି ତିନୋଟି ଭାଷା-ଅସମୀୟା, ପଞ୍ଜାବୀ ଓ ମାଲାୟାଲାମ ସହ ୨୦୦୨ରେ ଆରମ୍ଭ ହୋଇଥିଲା । ତେବେ ୯ରୁ ଅଧିକ ବର୍ଷ ଧରି ଏହା ସମ୍ପାଦକଙ୍କ ଅଭାବରୁ ସ୍ଥାଣୂ ହୋଇ ରହିଥିଲା । ୨୦୧୧ରେ କିଛି ଯୁବା ଏହାକୁ ଆଉଥରେ ସକ୍ରିୟ କରିଥିଲେ । ତା’ପରଠାରୁ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ୧୦ରୁ ଅଧିକ ଶିକ୍ଷାନୁଷ୍ଠାନ ଓ ବିଭିନ୍ନ ସହରରେ ୨୦ରୁ ଅଧିକ କର୍ମଶାଳାମାନ କରିସାରିଛି । ଏହି କାର୍ଯ୍ୟକ୍ରମର ଦ୍ୱିତୀୟ ଅଧିବେଶନରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ସମ୍ପାଦନା କରିବାକୁ ଆଗ୍ରହୀ ବ୍ୟକ୍ତିମାନଙ୍କ ନିମନ୍ତେ ଏକ କର୍ମଶାଳାର ଆୟୋଜନ ମଧ୍ୟ କରାଯାଇଛି ।

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odishan-march-27-2014-odisha-day-2014

Wikipedia taps students for Kannada content

praskrishna — 2014-04-03T10:01:27Z

Conducts workshops in Ujire, Moodbidri for training in vernacular editing.

The article by Renuka Phadnis was published in the Hindu on March 24, 2014. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is quoted.

Wikipedia is tapping college students in tier II and III cities in India to increase vernacular content on the web-based encyclopaedia.

U.B. Pavanaja, Programme Officer – Indian Language, Access to Knowledge, Centre for Internet Studies (CIS), Bangalore, says there is adequate content on Kannada, Kannadiga, Karnataka on Kannada Wikipedia but on science and technology, the content is a little less.

To fill this gap, he is conducting workshops to teach students to turn volunteers for Wikipedia in far-flung places like Ujire and Moodbidri.

On Sunday, 47 students attended a workshop at Shri Dharmasthala Manunatheshwara (SDM) College in Ujire. And most of them immediately donned the volunteer’s cap. “More people who write Kannada should contribute to Wikipedia in Kannada,” says Shalini, a student of M.A. in Mass Communication and Journalism (MCJ) at SDM College, after the workshop.

Murali Krishna, also a journalism student of SDM College, says typing in the language was “a bit difficult” but some practice will make it simpler. “I had no idea about (editing) Kannada Wikipedia,” he says.

On Saturday Mr. Pavanaja — who has been editing the Kannada Wikipedia for the past 10 years — conducted a similar workshop for 30 students at Alva’s College, Moodbidri.

Mr. Pavanaja says contributions peaked in between 2006 and 2008, then declined “due to many reasons” and “picked up last year”. There was a significant increase in the number of editors after 500 students of Christ University, Bangalore, were trained in editing at a workshop held in January this year.

He says Kannada Wikipedia has very few women editors. Of the 557 editors of Kannada Wikipedia, who have contributed 16,670 articles till now, 226 are active editors and, of them, five men and three women editors are “very active”.

Bhaskar Hegde, Head of the Department, MCJ, SDM College, said he got the workshops organised at the college after hearing about them from friend Niranjan Vanalli (Chairman, Department of MCJ, Mysore University). He said, “This is the second workshop here. The students are enthusiastic and it sharpens their writing skills.”

Mangalore will host a workshop to get people to contribute to Tulu Wikipedia. U.B. Pavanaja, Programme Officer – Indian Language, Access to Knowledge, Centre for Internet Studies (CIS), Bangalore, said a workshop will be held in Theosophical College, Balmatta, on April 6.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-march-24-2014-wikipedia-taps-students-for-kannada-content