Centre for Internet and Society

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

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

praskrishna — 2014-08-22T00:51:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in partnership with the School of Cultural Texts and Records, School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai is organizing a two-day workshop for students at Jadavpur University on August 25 and 26, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/developing-digital-open-knowledge-resources-in-indian-languages

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan — 2014-10-12T03:52:20Z

A two-day workshop for students was organized by Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women’s Studies Centre, University of Pune (KSPWSC), Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education (CILHE), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and Access to Knowledge Programme, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore (CIS-A2K) on September 11 and 12, 2014 in Pune. Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan summarize the developments from the workshop in this report.

Day 1

The workshop began with Tejaswini Niranjana speaking about the monolingual nature of the present day higher education system. She explained why monolingual students were disadvantaged in their pursuit of knowledge, since they could not grasp the concepts coming from the societies they lived in. The mandate of CILHE was briefly explained, and the commitment of the centre to generate accurate and relevant multi-lingual terminology for the social sciences and humanities stressed upon. She lauded the role of the KSPWSC, Pune University, in using bilingual pedagogic material and promoting an engagement with Indian language materials in their courses. The importance of using digital resources was also discussed. The collaborative nature of creating entries on the Wikipedia platform was stressed. The organizers added that students from various other institutions across the country would be participating in the larger exercise.

Next, T. Vishnu Vardhan of CIS-A2K spoke about the changing nature of knowledge repositories and the pattern of access to those repositories. He described at length the genesis of Wikipedia and the influence it has today on the way we access and understand knowledge. Different types of digital resources available to us and the nature in which they generate the knowledge and make it available was explained. Participants were also introduced to the difference between born digital material and digitized material along with the many sister projects of the Wikimedia foundation. Vishnu explained how anyone registering as an editor on Wikipedia could begin contributing to the development of this knowledge base. This was followed by a session in which the basics of Wikipedia editing were explained.

Following lunch, there was a group exercise that required the participants to pick any three concepts that were provided to them in a handout and try to explain the same without using the concept itself. This exercise was important as the participants would try to understand the concept more closely without assuming its meaning. This was self-evident. Better understanding of the concept would in turn help them to write about it or use it meaningfully in an Indian language entry on Wikipedia. Many participants found this exercise difficult in the initial stages as they fell back upon their classroom understanding of the term. They were asked to focus on explaining the concept without using the word itself but by understanding its effects and its multiple meanings.

In the second exercise, the participants made use of the material generated through the first exercise and tried to explain the denotative and connotative meanings of their chosen concept. The third exercise involved coming up with a cluster of concepts in which their chosen concept was embedded. The idea was to show how concepts derived meaning from a larger context, and could not be understood outside of their conceptual universe. The first day of the workshop ended with all the participants successfully registering themselves as Wikipedia editors, learning the basics of editing, and having taken part in an exercise that made them think about the concepts they used with greater clarity.


						Above: A participant explains the denotative and connotative meaning of her chosen concept.

Day 2

Participants were asked to search for an article in the English Wikipedia for a person, a book and a concept connected to women’s studies. They were asked to identify the challenges involved if they had to translate the article into an Indian language they were familiar with. The exercise was intended to alert the participants to the kind of problems they were likely to face during the act of translation. They were also asked to come up with solutions as to how these problems could be overcome. A key problem voiced by many participants was that of the non-availability of the right phrase/term/word in Indian languages. Tejaswini Niranjana advised the participants not to reinvent the wheel but use the terms that had been coined earlier but were now out of circulation in Indian languages. She also pointed out that translation from English to Indian languages is a different process than from Indian languages to English. In the former, one has to break sentence structure to make the meaning more clear, and in the latter one has to combine the sentences. She also said that the process of translation must happen at the level of sentences and ideas and not simply at the level of terms and words.

Answering another question about the lack of social context while translating a concept, Prof. Niranjana asked the participants to use the existing historical and social writings already available in their languages to overcome this problem. These writings could be updated and edited, and current references added.

Vishnu continued the discussion of using digital platforms to create and disseminate knowledge by explaining various tools available. He stressed the importance of sharing our efforts in creating knowledge and making it widely available, and pointed out various features of Wikipedia and Google translator. Participants were shown ways by which the existing knowledge base on Google and such other digital knowledge platforms could be improved.

Everyone then started working on his/her individual entries that would be the quantitative output of this workshop. They were asked to select one topic (a book, a person, a concept) from their previous exercise and develop an article based on that in any Indian language that they preferred. Most of the entries were in Marathi, with a few participants opting for Hindi. There was an entry in Bangla as well.

At the end of the workshop, more than half of our 26 participants had fully developed entries in Indian languages. These entries contained a table of contents and references, inter-wiki references, and external links, and in some cases included images too. Many participants wrote about personalities such as the writer Mukta Salve, the feminist theorist Mary John, and the contemporary Marathi writer Narayan Bhosle. Some wrote about concepts such as feminism, nationalism and domestic violence.

This two-day workshop proved to be immensely successful as the participants were motivated to contribute to the Wikimedia platforms regularly, and began to appreciate the importance of Indian language initiatives such as these.

We are very thankful to the entire faculty at KSPWSC, Pune University, Dr. Anagha Tambe, Dr. Swati Dyahadroy, Sneha Gole, Sanjay Kumar Kamble, and Deepa Tak who facilitated the discussions and were of immense help in conducting the workshop.


					Above: Tejaswini Niranjana with participants at the Pune workshop.

Click to download all the photographs from the workshop.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/report-on-developing-digital-open-knowledge-resources-in-indian-languages

Delhi meet focuses on Bhagabat Tungi revival

praskrishna — 2014-05-06T05:47:00Z

The Intellects, a Delhi based organisation of Odia intellectuals, and Shree Jagannath Mandir and Odisha Art and Cultural Center held a seminar on “Relevance of Bhagabat Tungi in the evolution of Odia language from Buddha era to digital age” on the occasion of one year celebration its mission ‘Asa Sikhiba Amari Bhasa’. The initiative is to spread and promote Odia language and literature in New Delhi.

The event report was published in the Pioneer on April 26, 2014. Subhashish Panigrahi from CIS-A2K participated in the event.

The seminar was attended by Rajya Sabha MP Baisnab Parida, Dr Subash Pani, Dr Bhagaban Prakash, researcher Subrat Prusty, writer and lawyer Biraja Mohapatra, journalist and Odiakart.com founder Sahasranshu Mahapatra, Subhashish Panigrahi, Kamdev Biswal of Tyagraj Nagar Jaggnath Temple and The Intellects chairman Debendra Nath Rout. The Odia intellectuals stresses on the need for revival of Bhagabat Tungi in Odisha villages as knowledge hub.

Prusty was felicitated with The Intellects Award-2014 for his contribution to Odia language, while Ramachandra Nath was felicitated for his Pallibani mission in New Delhi.

Aabout 600 Odias attended the progremme, including Dr Anita Panda, Prof Saudamini Barik, Jayaram Samal, Indubhushan Lenka, Odia Radio founder Sitanshu Mohapatra, journalist Asit Ranjan Mishra, OdishaDiary (www.orissadiary.com) founder Prachee Naik, Rashmi Ranjan Parida, The Intellects members Sangram Dhar, Smrutidhara Rout, Anasuya Sahoo, Aditya Mohanty, Nirmal Dhal, Sanjaya Parida, Pankajamala Sarangi, Premanda Swain, lawyer Sanjeeb Kumar Mohanty and Tarun Samantray. The Intellects will also organise 7-day Bhagabata Sandhya on the premises of Shree Jagannath Mandir, Tyagraj Nagar, from April 21 to 27 in an effort to spread the noble principles of the Shreemad Bhagabat.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-pioneer-april-26-2014-delhi-meet-focuses-on-bhagabat-tunigi-revival

Data Xgen launches paid Hindi email service

praskrishna — 2016-08-30T02:35:03Z

Jaipur based Enterprise email provider Data Xgen Technologies has launched a paid email service in Hindi Devnagari script. This is especially for .bharat domain names, but can also be used for other domains. As of now, the company offers email packages starting at Rs 99, Rs 499, Rs 999 and Rs 1,499, which look like monthly plans.

The blog post by Sneha Johari was published in Medianama on August 29, 2016.

Ajay Data, the company’s founder and CEO told MediaNama that it plans to launch an app for sending free email in Indic language, starting with Hindi. Data said that he was hopeful about Hindi email adoption given the vast majority of the population in India was rural and did not understand English. “People get left out of communication streams because they do not understand English. But they can still get onto the internet and communicate with all of us. Mobile companies are also selling phones in Indian languages, marketing as Hindi phones.. And this is the right time (for Indic email) since the segment is being created,” he added.

Earlier this month, the Indian government told email service providers to provide users with addresses in Indian languages, starting with Hindi. It also wanted ‘sufficient local language content and tools to access it’ in order to increase internet penetration and push higher rural adoption. This was needed because English speakers and readers in the country were low (10.35%), according to Rajiv Bansal, Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Electronics and IT.

Wikipedia Indic efforts

About 3 weeks ago, Wikipedia launched in Tulu, the 23rd Indian language Wiki. In September 2013, the Goa University had entered into a 3 year MoU with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) for building the Konkani Wikipedia, which was launched 6 months later. In August 2014, former Bihar CM Nitish Kumar launched the ‘Bihar on Wikipedia’ campaign inviting people of the state to write about their villages, towns, culture, history, development over the years, etc. Note that in 2012, Wikipedia editors were digitizing Indian language, out-of-copyright texts online, trying to address the comparative paucity of Indic language texts online.

As of June 2016, Wikipedia had 16 million page views per month on the Hindi wiki, with overall 106,844 articles. This is not a significant increase. According to this August 2011 report, there were 0.1 million Hindi articles on the platform, and 9 million overall views.

Indian mobile handsets need to support Hindi: BIS

In June, the Bureau of Indian Standards reportedly said that mobile handsets in India would need to support typing in Hindi and English, and reading in all 22 official Indian languages. We’d pointed out at the time that this was essential for growth of access to the internet for handsets in order to access content in users’ local languages.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/data-xgen-launches-paid-hindi-email-service

Darshana Mandrekar speaks on Konkani Wikipedia

nitika — 2013-12-31T10:38:07Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Goa University is working to build Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this program it organised the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program recently.

Darshana Mandrekar a participant at the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program speaks about her inspiration to edit Konkani Wikipedia.

Video


Above: Darshana Mandrekar speaks about Konkani Wikipedia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/darshana-mandrekar-on-konkani-wikipedia

Darshan Kandolkar on Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Process

nitika — 2013-12-31T10:47:46Z

Darshan Kandolkar, talks about his experience with Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Process and Konkani translation sprint.

Video


Above: Darshan Kandolkar's interview on Konkani Wikipedia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/darshan-kandolkar-konkani-vishwakosh-digitization-process

Dalit History Month 2017 edit-a-thon in Delhi, India

tito — 2017-06-21T06:09:39Z

Dalit History Month edit-a-thon was conducted in Delhi on 20 May 2017. Here is a report.

A Dalit HIstory Month edit-a-thon was conducted Delhi, India on 20 May, 2017. This event was organised by Whose Knowledge?. A member from the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore, attended the event as a resource person. The history of Dalit movement, and their knowledge are not very-well represented on Wikipedia, and it is essential that attempts are made to bridge such gaps. This edit-a-thon was such an initiative. On 15 April, this year, an edit-a-thon was conducted in Berkeley, US, and the Delhi edit-a-thon was followed by that.

14 editors participated in the edit-a-thon (not counting the resource persons). In the introduction speech Wikimedian and the primary co-ordinator of the event Inaaya explained the details the importance, scope and objectives of the edit-a-thon. This was followed by hands' on editing activities. A few participants were new to Wikipedia, and they created their accounts. Discussions took place to understand the gaps, and the difficulties. It was noticed that finding references to create or expand articles is sometimes a big challenge. Other than referencing, other topics such as Wikipedia manual of style, images, image license policy etc. were also discussed. Although it was a one-day workshop, the aim was to continue it after the event as well, so the participants were encouraged to continue editing. We have statistics of last 1 month, and it shows that in this time period: 45 articles were edited, 11 articles were created, and more than 10 thousand words were added.

There are plans to conduct follow-up Wiki-events. A few students of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, showed interest to form Wikipedia club in their campus. Although, the edit-a-thon was not very big in scale and size, taking such an initiative itself is challenging, and hopefully such initiatives will help reduce the knowledge gap on Wikipedia.

Image source

File:Dalit History Month header.jpg, from Wikimedia Commons, author: Bilqischondol, file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/dalit-history-month-2017-edit-a-thon-in-delhi-india

Centre for Internet and Society

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

Context

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

Partnerships

Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons

Media links

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

Context

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

Partnerships

Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons

Media links

Digital Technology Engaging Pedagogy through Hindi Wikipedia - A Case Study

Abstract

Digital Resources in Telugu: A Workshop for Research Scholars

Important Instructions for Interested Participants

Digital Publishing Meeting

Digital native: Control A, Backspace

Digital Literacy Workshop at Department of Arts, Delhi University

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

Day 1

Day 2

Delhi meet focuses on Bhagabat Tungi revival

Data Xgen launches paid Hindi email service

Darshana Mandrekar speaks on Konkani Wikipedia

Video

Darshan Kandolkar on Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Process

Video

Dalit History Month 2017 edit-a-thon in Delhi, India

See also

Image source