Centre for Internet and Society

Goa University to make available online Konkani Wikipedia, within 6 months

praskrishna — 2013-10-03T09:35:55Z

Thick heaps of the four volumes of Konkani language ‘vishwakosh’ or encyclopedia , till now available only in hard copy, will now attain a modern access.

This blog post was published by Jagran Josh on September 30, 2013. CIS signed an MoU with Goa University for digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons license.

The four volumes of encyclopaedia work, initially started by prominent Goan writer and academician late Manoharrai Sardessaiat of Goa University, will now be accessed in digitized format, alongside forming a base for a Konkani Wikipedia.

As mentioned by officials, the Konkani Wikipedia is to be ready to access within upcoming six months. With this, Goa University has turned out to be the first varsity in the nation to enter into a creative commons licence that will permit copyrighted produced data by an Indian university accessible to internet users and open to modification (wiki), making Goa University a victory of sorts of free information.

The university has signed a three-year MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge Programme. This centre represents Wikipedia in India, and now also the Konkani Wikipedia project.

After Google, Facebook and Yahoo, Wikipedia is the fourth most used asset on the internet which operates as an internet based encyclopaedia. Over Wikipedia, any of the users can upload new information and can also update or amend an existing topic. The Konkani Wikipedia is also planned to offer similar privileges to its users. GU's Konkani department and the centre will manage the development from the university campus.

"The Konkani vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia," GU vice-chancellor Satish Shetye said.

Shetye told, GU is delighted to relate with Wikipedia, which has become a global trend breaking the monopoly of publishers and transforming the way of sharing of knowledge into a democratic process.

GU registrar Vijayendra Kamat mentions, "At present, it takes time for a page with information in a regional language to download because they are usually found in the form of scanned pages, which are accessible as images and not text. The Konkani Wikipedia will make the text accessible as is the case of any English text on the internet”.

The Konkani vishwakosh, containing four large volumes of total of 3,632 pages, is a work of period of 14 years. It was edited by late Manoharrai Sardessai followed by the editor Tanaji Halarnkar. For the compilation process, GU Staff members, Ranjan Naik, Kalpana Naik, Kanchan Mordekar, Surekha Naik, Mukesh Thali and Shailendra Mehta contributed to it.

Konkani vishwakosh or encyclopedia covers, concisely presented world information with special weight given on information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography etc. The Wikipedia is offered in 20 Indian languages that includes Telugu, Assamese, Marathi, but not in language Konkani so far.

Interested Students, Professors or anyone else could contribute to this Konkani Encyclopaedia project by enrolling online at bit.ly/konkanivishwakosh, before 05 October 2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/jagranjosh-september-30-2013-goa-university-to-make-available-online-konkani-wikipedia-within-6-months

Konknni Wikipedia Workshop

praskrishna — 2013-11-15T08:19:50Z

Dalgado Konknni Akademi in collaboration with Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme is organsing a 2 day Wikipedia editing workshop at the Goa Central State Library on November 16 and 17, 2013 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

This workshop is free and open for anyone to attend. Please feel free to join hands in the campaign to promote free access to knowledge in one’s mother tongue – Konknni in Romi! This is a brilliant opportunity to showcase Konkani language in Roman script on a global platform such as Konknni Wikipedia!

Click to download the invite here. (PDF, 64 Kb)

Read more on Dalgado Konknni Akademi here
Read more on the Centre for Internet and Society here
Read more on Goa Central State Library here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/konknni-wikipedia-workshop-nov-16-17-2013

For the love of Konkani: Preserving Goa's official language

praskrishna — 2013-09-30T05:13:34Z

With many local dialects on the brink of extinction, Joanna Lobo meets the language conservationists who have taken it upon themselves to preserve Goa's official language.

The article by Joanna Lobo was published in DNA on September 29, 2013. Nitika Tandon is quoted.

Social networking site Orkut may have lost its lustre but digging through its remnants throws up a group called Aamchigele Bindaas Community (ABC). It was started to bring together Konkani-speaking people across the world.

The group is now active on Facebook under the name Broad Minded Konkanis (BMK), where people post queries about Konkani words and phrases. "This group has helped members understand the language to a great extent,” says Rajanikanth Shenoy Kudpi, founder and one of the administrators of the 160-member group. BMK has members from Saraswat, Catholic Christian, Bunt, Navayat Muslim, Jain and other communities, who speak Konkani.

“Konkani as a language will definitely be rejuvenated if contemporaries and scholars put in consistent efforts,” says Kudpi.

One such effort was a recent four-day workshop organised by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Access to Knowledge (A2K) for the students of Goa University and St.Xavier’s College. “We want to strengthen the Konkani Wikipedia,” says Nitika Tandon, programme manager, CIS-A2K.

Tandon quotes the Census Department of India 2001 figures that puts Konkani speakers at 24 lakh but adds that limited documentation is available online.

However, opinion is divided over the language's fate. “I don’t think it's dying,” says Roshan Pai, founder, savemylanguage.org. Pai started the website, a Konkani dictionary that documents the language spoken by the GSB community in and around Mangalore, in 2005.

The site is dependent on volunteer contributions — people send in meanings of various words that are validated by others, who also put in different uses or meanings of the words. All the 17,528 words collected (belonging to GSB dialects in Mangalore, Goa, Kerala and Cochin) are stored online.

One of the major factors behind people talking about saving a language has to do with its links to culture. “It is the essence of life and contains a lot of information that has been passed on through the generations,” says Gurudath Baliga, assistant director at World Konkani Centre, Mangalore.

The centre works towards preserving the language by empowering the community that speaks it through tech-related grassroot activities, documenting folklore, appointing teachers in different schools and publishing books. The centre is now working on Konkanverter.com, an in, catholic Christian, ter script translator, and World Konkani Archives, that will serve as a repository for all data and text. With such initiatives, the language is in safe hands.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dnaindia-september-29-2013-joanna-lobo-for-the-love-of-konkani

Konkani Wikipedia in the making

praskrishna — 2013-09-30T09:11:09Z

Process of uploading the four volumes of Konkani encyclopaedia will be completed in six months’ time.

This article by Prakash Kamat was published in the Hindu on September 29, 2013. T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

The Goa University has re-launched a four-volume Konkani Vishwakosh (Konkani encyclopaedia) and announced its plan to upload the same on Wikipedia so as to build the Konkani Wikipedia.

The project is seen as a major stride in Konkani learning, research and production of books. The project, which will involve 42 students of the Konkani Department of Goa University including four designated as Ambassadors of Konkani, will turn students into producers of knowledge rather than mere consumers of knowledge. The University has signed a three-year memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) for building up the Konkani Wikipedia.

“Wikipedia is a global phenomenon and a platform to bring people together for making creative activities possible, which in fact, has challenged the monopoly of publishers and created a movement in order to put together knowledge, further making it accessible to public,” said Satish Shetye, Vice-Chancellor of Goa University, speaking at the launch of the project.

Narrating how the project began, Registrar of Goa University V. P. Kamat explained that Mr. Satish Shetye, who took over as Vice-Chancellor over a year ago, happened to notice the huge piles of hardbound volumes of the Konkani encyclopaedia stacked in the Goa University library and wished to digitise the manuscripts and re-launch the encyclopaedia. The idea to upload the whole content on Wikipedia was thus born.

The work for the Konkani encyclopaedia project was commissioned during the tenure of the first Vice-Chancellor B. Sheik Ali. The project was seen as a historical step to document the identity of the State and its people and the history of Goa for posterity. University insiders, however, said that no serious efforts were made to take the invaluable research work undertaken beyond the University. Secondly, because of the lack of human resource and funds, no initiative was taken so far to update these volumes.

Initiative

Prof. Shetye took a proactive initiative and tied up with Access to Knowledge Programme of the CIS. The four volumes of the 3,632 page Konkani encyclopaedia are being released under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0 to support the movement of open knowledge and open access.

Programme Director at CIS’s Access to Knowledge Programme Vishnu Vardhan said that the process of uploading the four volumes of Konkani encyclopa edia on Wikipedia would be completed in six months’ time. He also stressed on the need to rewrite some of the articles in the encyclopaedia so as to make the content more relevant.

Students of the University involved in digitisation work and rewriting the content see this as an opportunity to learn about digitisation and to write Konkani of global standard, said Madhavi Sardesai, Professor, Department of Konkani at the University. Mr. Vardhan also disclosed plans for a relevant training programme specially co-designed by the CIS as well as the University to put up the content on Wikipedia.

He said that the Goa University is the first in the country to re-license copyright of its content and hailed the initiative towards open knowledge. Though the MoU signed last month would be initially valid for three years, Mr. Vardhan is optimistic that it would go beyond the launch of the Vishwakosh volumes.

Mr. Halarnkar, associated with the Konkani literary movement, who was present at the launch as the editor of the original volumes, welcomed the process of digitisation as relevant, historical and need of the hour. However, he stressed on supervision over the accuracy and accountability while digitising original data and regular updating of the content in the context of the Konkani language, its history and movement.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-september-29-2013-prakash-kamat-konkani-wikipedia-in-the-making

Goa University announces plan to upload Konkani encyclopedia on Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2013-10-03T09:14:55Z

The Goa University, on Thursday, re-launched the four volumes of Konkani Vishwakosh (Konkani encyclopedia), and announced its ambitious plan to upload the same on Wikipedia – a free encyclopedia built collaboratively using Wiki software – so as to build the Konkani Wikipedia.

This article was published in Navhind Times on September 27, 2013. T.Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

The university has entered into a 3-year memorandum of understanding with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), for building up the Konkani Wikipedia.

Vice Chancellor of Goa University Dr Satish Shetye, speaking during the event held at the university said that Wikipedia is a global phenomenon and a platform to bring people together for making creative activities possible, which in fact, has challenged the monopoly of publishers and created a movement in order to put together knowledge, further making it accessible to public.

“This platform will bring together Konkani speaking people of the world, besides providing an opportunity to learn about digitisation, and write Konkani of global standard.”

Dr Shetye, who incidentally noticed large number of volumes of the Konkani encyclopedia stacked in the Goa University premises, decided to take them to maximum people through their re-launch and upload on the Wikipedia.

The work for the Konkani encyclopedia project was commissioned during the tenure of vice chancellor Prof B Sheik Ali, and was carried out by various people from Dr Manoharrai Sardesai to Dr Tanaji Halarnakar, with the aid of the Konkani department at the university.

The four volumes of the 3,632 page Konkani encyclopedia are being re-released under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0 to support the movement of open knowledge and open access. The programme director for the Access to Knowledge Programme of the Centre for Internet and Society, Vishnu Vardhan, speaking on the occasion said that the process of uploading the four volumes of Konkani encyclopedia on the Wikipedia would be complete in six months time, and includes processes like scanning, digitisation and creating articles as per the requirement of Wikipedia. He also stressed on the need to rewrite some of the articles in Konkani encyclopedia so as to contemporarise their contents.

Vardhan also informed that relevant training programme would be specially co-designed by the CIS as well as the university to put up the content on the Wikipedia.

Goa University is the first university in the country to re-license copyright of its content, and hence can be termed as the ‘Champion of open knowledge’, he observed. Registrar Prof V P Kamat and head of Konkani department Priyadarshini Tadkodkar were also present on the occasion.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/navhindtimes-goa-news-september-27-2013-goa-university-announces-plan-to-upload-konkani-encyclopedia-on-wikipedia

Goa University Partners CIS India To Build Konkani Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2013-10-03T09:44:21Z

The Goa university has entered into a three year memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) for building the Konkani Wikipedia, reports navhindtimes.

This blog post by Apurva Chaudhary was published by Medianama on September 30, 2013.

As part of this partnership, Goa University will be uploading the four volumes of Konkani encyclopedia and the Konkani wikipedia is expected to be available in six months. It appears that the partnership with CIS India includes processes such as scanning, digitization, and creating articles as per requirement of Wikipedia. CIS India has also called out for volunteers for a period of three months to help them digitizing the Konkani encyclopedia.

This is quite notable since most of the development in digitizing documents in Indian language did not include Konkani language, which is spoken in western coast of India. Besides, since the university will upload the Konkani encyclopedia on Wikipedia, it will allow users to search through texts. Most of the digitization projects just scan the books and upload the pages in image format, which makes it difficult to search or perform any kind of data related query.

Last year in May, Wikipedians were digitizing Indian language, out-of-copyright texts online, trying to address the comparative paucity of Indic language texts online. Wikisource is a repository of documents and archived material that serves as a reference source for Wikipedia, and a means of improving access to information sources. Of the 64 languages Wikisource is available in, 8 are Indian: Tamil (stats), Malayalam (stats),Telugu (stats), Kannada (stats), Sanskrit (stats), Marathi (stats), Bengali (stats) and Gujarati (stats). Note that most of these Indian language Wikipedia’s receive active contribution from CIS India under its CIS-A2K program.

Wikipedia had recorded 43.5 million pageviews in Indian language wikis, as of October 2011. In June 2013, the Hindi language Wikipedia had received monthly pageviews of 7.8 million, Tamil language Wikipedia had received 5.2 million pageviews, among others. So there’s clearly a demand to access information in local languages.

That said, while more languages are being added to the list, it should be seen that the articles in these languages do not contain just one or two sentences. According to an analysis by Shijualex.in, many articles posted under Indian language Wikipedia were under 2kb, indicating that it contained only couple of sentences.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/medianama-september-30-2013-apurva-chaudhary-goa-university-partners-cis-to-build-konkani-wikipedia

Report of Konkani Wikipedia's progress (July-December 2015)

rahim — 2016-02-05T02:49:29Z

Konkani language is one of the 22 languages recognized by Indian union in 8th schedule. As per the 2007 census there are about 7.4 million Konkani speakers.[1] Konkani language has its own Wikipedia created on 15th June 2015. This blog post will try to put out Konkani Wikipedia's growth from a perspective based on Wikimedia stats.

Konkani language has varied scripts used by its speakers. There are more than six different scripts in which Konkani people seem to be writing, of these, Devanagari (same as Hindi, Marathi), Romi (Roman or Latin script) and Kannada script are more popular. The project went out of incubation and became a live Wikipedia project as Goan Konkani Wikipedia (language code gom and is available at gom.wikipedia.org).The Konkani community that contributes on Wikipedia is mostly present in Goa with a few contributors living elsewhere.

Below is the last 6 months' statistics of Goan Konkani Wikipedia:

	Total Editors	New editors	Active editors	Very active editors	Article count	New article created per month
July 2015	124		8	4	2100	8
August 2015	125	1	6	3	2300	6
September 2015	125		5	4	2400	1
October 2015	125		5	3	2400	1
November 2015	125		2		2400

Observations:

As we see the total number editors is at a good state as compared to other language Wikipedia projects that have gone live recently. Also the article count seem to be significant.
But the growth in total number of editors is not that encouraging and needs to be worked upon. This might be probably because of unawareness of Konkani Wikipedia among the native language speakers.
The active editor count has been declining over the 6 months. For the month of December, there has been no activity from the active community on Konkani Wikipedia.
Number of the most active Wikipedians will grow once we proactively engage with the existing community in organising outreach to bring new editors.
There has been no new article created on Konkani Wikipedia in November and December at all. This is an alarming issue.
This is slightly disturbing as we can see from stats tables.
Of the 40 or so active Konkani Wikipedians, only 2 of them have done some small activity on Konkani Wikipedia, whereas the rest have not visited the site for almost 3 months.
The community needs to be engaged with more and there is a need for bringing leadership. May be Konkani language encyclopedia Konkani Vishwakosh that was relicensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license by the Goa University will be a useful resource to enhance the Goan Konkani Wikipedia.

Note:
1. Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/konkani-wikipedia-progress-from-july-to-december-2015

Wikipedia workshop for Konkani students conducted in Mangaluru

tito — 2017-06-28T09:57:32Z

A two days Wikipedia workshop "introduction to Wikipedia" was conducted at Besant College, Mangaluru. 16 undergraduate and post-graduate students from 3 different colleges participated in the event. Here is a report.

A two day workshop was conducted for students who opted konkani at U.G.& P.G.courses of Mangalore University on 16 and 17 December at Besant Evening College, Mangaluru. This event was jointly organised by Mangalore University Konkani Adhyayana Peeta, and the Dept. of Konkani (M. A.). The Centre for Internet Society, India (CIS, India) and Besant Evening College, Mangaluru were the collaborators. Dr. Devadasa Pai of Karnataka Konkani Sahitya Academy was the primary co-ordinator. A representative from CIS, India participated in the workshop as a resource person. Harriet Vidyasagar, a Konkani Wikipedia enthusiast and supporter, and Sabrina Hougaard attended the event to groom the participant and share their expertise.

16 undergraduate and post-graduate colleges from 3 different colleges of Mangalore participated in this workshop. The table below shows participation from each college and gender ratio.

College	Participants	Female	Male
Mangalore University College	2	1	1
St. Aloysius College	9	4	5
Milagress Degree College	5	3	2
Total	16	8	8

The first day's (16 December) event was started with general introduction to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement. The following topics were discussed:

Wikipedia and Wikimedia movement
Importance of Wikipedia as a source of knowledge and information in the World Wide Web (WWW)
Free knowledge movement
Indic language Wikipedias

This was followed by account creation where the participants were asked to create accounts on Wikipedia. After that they were taught about Wikipedia user page, and sandbox page. They were also taught about basic editing (general formatting) on sandbox using Visual Editor.

On the second day (17 December) the participants wrote articles on their Konkani Wikipedia user sandbox page in Kannada script. 16 students wrote more than 25 short articles on their sandbox.

They were also introduced to Wikipedia content translation tool and Wikidata. During the Wikidata session, following a general introduction to Wikidata, the participants were asked to add labels and descriptions in Indian languages such as Kannada, Konkani etc. More than 150 edits were made during this exercise.

This workshop should be followed up by another iteration where the participants will be taught about the next level of editing.

Image credit

Source: Wikimedia Commons, author: User:Outofindia, CC-BY-SA-4.0

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-workshop-for-konkani-students-conducted-in-mangalore

Stats for March 2016

rahim — 2016-06-07T04:06:03Z

CIS-A2K team closely works with 5 Indian languages, we call as focus language areas. Here are the stats for the month of March 2016.

We generate stats for each of our focus language area month on month, and it has been used for designing and modifying our strategies from time to time. Though these stats were never published publicly, as we get them at stats.wikimedia.org already and publishing here is just repeating it; it was felt that some more metrics can be added and published month on month here at CIS blog. Also, the data here would be for the last month, while it takes two months for data to get updated at stats.wikimedia.org.

Stub articles created :

Kannada - 3/131

Konkani - 9/38

Marathi - 50/176

Odia - 8/89

Telugu - 59/284

In Kannada Wikipedia, about 131 new articles were created and of these only 3 are stub class articles. This is because Kannada Wikipedia is implementing a strict policy on not allowing a stub class article. There is an abuse filter created by one of the admins, Harish MG, which does not allow an editor to submit a smaller article than 1000 bytes. While Konkani showed a good progress in creation of new articles and only 9 of these 38 articles were stub class articles.

Marathi and Odia had a 28% and 9% share of total articles created as stubs respectively, while Telugu has about 21% of total articles created as stubs.

Active editors count has gone up in Kannada with 133 active editors during March 2016 - this could be accounted to the post 13th anniversary activities. Four focused editathons were organised as part of the 13th anniversary celebrations. The number of active editors increased in Konkani too. While in Marathi, Odia and Telugu the number was consistent with the previous months' numbers.

Now. lets look at the editing activity.

Kannada had 3279 edits adding about 86.57 MB of data. Konkani Wikipedia saw 920 edits in all, adding 8.41 MB of data. Marathi Wikipedia had 2926 edits with 68.42 MB of data; Odia Wikipedia added 1106 edits and 15.28 MB of data and Telugu Wikipedia had 8559 edits with 122.17 MB of data.

Having a provision of local image upload, Telugu Wikipedia added 53 images to the project while Marathi, one image was added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/stats-for-march-2016

Konkani-language books from Konkani-language culture center Mannd Sobhaann to enrich Konkani Wikipedia

Rahmanuddin Shaik and Tanveer Hasan — 2015-11-12T13:08:07Z

Mangalore based cultural centre Maand Sobhaann has recently relicensed 3 of their publications under a free license so that the books could be digitised on Konkani Wikisource and enrich Konkani Wikipedia.

Mannd Sobhaann, a private organisation working for unification of Konkani people around the world, preservation and promotion of Konkani language and culture, has recently relicensed 3 of their published books under a CC-by-SA 4.0 license. Erik Ozario, founder of the organisation has kindly permitted to open these books under free license so they get digitised on Konkani Wikisource and contribute in enriching the Goan Konkani Wikiepdia. Thanks to Wikimedian Harriet Vidyasagar for her help in acquiring these books. The three books that are relicensed are Konkani pustakaam, a compilation of Konkani books published for last century; Prabhaav, compilation of Konkani stories and writers; and another book containing compilation of songs in praise of Jesus.

Mannd Sobhaann as an organisation has been quite instrumental in taking Konkani language to masses. They have opened up a space called Kalangan in Mangalore for Konkani speakers to gather and organise various language and cultural celebrations. They have published 13 books and 23 music albums on Konkani language and culture. Their publication and association of them will hopefully lead to better the Konkani Wikimedia projects and unite the Konkani speakers in Mangalore and Goa to grow the Wikimedia community.

CIS-A2K's work with the Konkani Wikipedia received a boost when two prominent organisations working for popularisation and conservation of Konkani culture, Maand Sobhaan and World Konkani Centre decided to join hands with us. They have agreed to not only host GLAM (unleashing cultural data by institutional partnership with galleries, libraries, archives and museums) activities at their premises and the proposed museum at Maand Sobhaan but by donating three invaluable books to be released under CC-BY-SA license have paved the way for introduction of new content and also provided sources for citation and reference.

These organisations have worked relentlessly in their own capacity to spread the Konkani language, culture, aspects of life and introduce prominent personalities that have worked to promote Konkani language. Their association with the Konkani Wikimedia projects is a sure way of not only addition of content but leads to the definite possibilities of increase in readers, increase in editors. A2K has proposed to digitise their archives which contains invaluable resources (audio, video and text) that shall be of immense help in growing Konkani Wikimedia projects.

By securing the help of these organisations, CIS-A2K has been able to spread the utility and functionality of Konkani Wikipedia from Goa to Mangalore. CIS-A2K is also considering to conduct and organise events that bring in institutions and organisations from different Konkani speaking parts of India together.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/konkani-language-books-from-konkani-language-culture-center-mannd-sobhaann-to-enrich-konkani-wikipedia

Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project

nitika — 2013-10-01T12:23:33Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the University of Goa invite you to a two-month project on digitization of Konkani Vishwakosh. Please send in your applications by October 5, 2013.

Click to download the event brochure here

Konkani Vishwakosh

Goa University has generously approved the re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public and thus preserve Konkani language and culture in the digital era.

Digitization Project

Goa University in collaboration with the Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) is digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh. This is a 2 month project where we will work with group of individuals who will help digitize the encyclopedia in a time bound manner.

We’re calling out for students, professors, faculty, professionals or anyone who is interested to preserve Konkani language and culture!

Help preserve Konkani language
Help preserve Konkani culture
Enroll in the program today and make a difference!

What will you gain out of it?

Learn typing skills: CIS-A2K will organize typing workshops for those who are not comfortable typing in Devanagari. This will be a two-day workshop organized in Panjim, Goa. Brilliant opportunity for you to learn a new skill!
Learn about Konkani Wikipedia: The program will also introduce you to Konkani Wikipedia, how does it work, who edits it, how can you edit etc.
Improve your writing, critical thinking, and research skills: Yes, there is so much that you can learn in our workshop. These skills will help you in personal and professional development.
Help preserve your language and culture: Out of 780 spoken Indian languages, 250 died out in last 50 years. Take the first step to save your language.
Go global: Showcase your work, Konkani language and culture on a global platform. That’s the power of digital era!
Earn while you learn: 30 final selected candidates will be remunerated for their work.

Deliverables

Selected 30 candidates will be assigned 100 pages each of Konkani Vishwakosh that needs to be digitized over a span of 2 months (Oct & Nov 2013). Typing 50 pages a month is surely a cakewalk!

Enroll Today!

Please fill the Application Form latest by October 5, 2013.

Contact Us

If you have any further questions please
Mail us at: nitika@cis-india.org
Twitter: @CISA2K
Visit us at: bitly.com/cis-a2k

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

Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC-BY-SA 3.0

nitika — 2013-11-04T12:14:03Z

Goa University re-released Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0. To celebrate and further the movement of open knowledge and open access Goa University in collaboration with Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) organised an event on September 26, 2013 at 10 a.m., at the Goa University Conference Hall.

Introduction

Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume encyclopedia published by Goa University. It encompasses all the world information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography, etc. By releasing Vishwakosh under CC (Creative Commons) license Goa University is making it freely available to public and giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done.

Goa University and CIS-A2K have signed an MoU to work together to digitize “Konkani Vishwakosh” under Creative Common license and build a Digital Knowledge Partnership in order to enhance digital literacy in the Konkani language and facilitate collaborative knowledge production and disseminate the same free of cost through Kokani Wikipedia (currently under incubation). Gos University and CIS-A2K will co-design and jointly implement relevant training programmes to achieve this objective during the months of Oct-Dec 2013. Information from the Vishwakosh will also be used to write articles on Konakni Wikipedia by the volunteers.

CIS-A2K is grateful for the support and encouragement received from the Goa University Vice-Chancellor Dr. Satish Shetye; Prof. Alito Siqueira; Prof. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar; Dr. Madhavi Sardesai; Dr. Gopakumar; and other faculty of Goa University.

We are also equally grateful to Wikipedians Harriet Vidyasagar and Frederick Noronha who have engaged with CIS-A2K team and been a constant source of support.

Snippets from the Event

"The Konkani vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia," GU vice-chancellor Satish Shetye said.
“Wikipedia is a global phenomenon and a platform to bring people together for making creative activities possible, which in fact, has challenged the monopoly of publishers and created a movement in order to put together knowledge, further making it accessible to public,” said Satish Shetye, Vice-Chancellor of Goa University, speaking at the launch of the project.
"Professors, students and anyone with expertise or love for Konkani can come forward to help with the project for which training will be provided. Information in the Konkani vishwakosh will also be updated as per the current developments," said Vishnu Vardhan from Access to Knowlesge Programme.
"The Konkani vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia," GU vice-chancellor Satish Shetye said.
“This platform will bring together Konkani speaking people of the world, besides providing an opportunity to learn about digitisation, and write Konkani of global standard.” GU vice-chancellor Satish Shetye said.

Press Coverage

Goa university re-releasing Konkani encyclopaedia on Sept 26 (The Times of India, September 24, 2013).
Konkani Vishwakosh relaunch tomorrow (The Hindu, September 25, 2013).
Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months (The Times of India, September 27, 2013).
For the love of Konkani: Preserving Goa's official language (by Joanna Lobo, DNA, September 29, 2013).
Konkani Wikipedia in the making (by Prakash Kamat, The Hindu, September 29, 2013).
Goa University to make available online Konkani Wikipedia, within 6 months (Jagran Josh, September 30, 2013).
Goa University Partners CIS India To Build Konkani Wikipedia (by Apurva Chaudhary, Medianama, September 30, 2013).

Invitation

http://bit.ly/1aCQ8hW

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/re-release-konkani-vishwakosh-under-cc-by-sa-3.0

Konkani Vishwakosh Under CC-BY-SA

nitika — 2013-11-30T10:47:20Z

Upon CIS-A2K's explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under the Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public and giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done. This is a huge step to help preserve Konkani language and culture in digital era and will also feed into building of Konkani Wikipedia.

What is Konkani Vishwakosh?

Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume hard copy encyclopedia (3632 pages) published by Goa University; a work of over 14 years. It encompasses all the world information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography, etc. The encyclopaedia is written in Konkani language — a language spoken primarily by people living in Goa and in the neighbouring states on the western coast of India (also known as the Konkan belt) — some pockets in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. The Vishwakosh serves as a primary source of information and is one of the most important documented texts for a community of 2,489,015 Konkani speakers spread across India and worldwide.

What does re-releasing under CC mean?

Upon CIS-A2K's explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Vishwakosh under the Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public and giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done.

This is a huge step to help preserve Konkani language and culture in digital era.

Goa University is the first varsity to enter into a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license that will permit copyrighted produced data by an Indian university accessible to internet users and open to modification (wiki), making Goa University a victory of sorts of free information.

MoU: Goa University and the Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K)

Goa University has entered into a three year MoU with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) for building Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this partnership, Goa University will be uploading four volumes of Konkani encyclopaedia under CC licence on Wikimedia projects and CIS will help with scanning and digitization of the Vishwakosh and using it as a foundation for creating articles on Konkani Wikipedia. CIS India has also called out for volunteers to help digitize Konkani Vishwakosh.

Thick heaps of the four volumes of Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopaedia), till now available only in hard copy, will now be available for free on the Internet.

Event: Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC

http://bit.ly/17nPMuV

To celebrate and further the movement of open knowledge and open access, Goa University in collaboration with CIS-A2K organised an event on September 26, 2013 at 10 a.m. at the Goa University Conference Hall. The event had a huge attendance including Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice Chancellor of GU), V.P. Kamat (Registrar of GU), T. Vishnu Vardhan (Programme Director CIS-A2K), close kin of Late. Manoharrai Sardesai (writer of the Encyclopaedia), Tanaji Halarnkar (editor of the Encyclopaedia), Goa University’s staff, faculty and students, members of Konkani speaking community and the press.

During the event, GU Vice-Chancellor Dr. Satish Shetye said, "the Konkani Vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopaedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia," he was quoted as having said.

The event was covered by several local and national newspapers:

"Goa University to make available online Konkani Wikipedia, within 6 months", Jagran Josh, September 30, 2013.
Chaudhary, Apurva. "Goa University Partners CIS India To Build Konkani Wikipedia", Medianama, September 30, 2013.
Lobo,Joanna. "For the love of Konkani: Preserving Goa's official language", DNA, September 29, 2013.
Prakash, Kamat."Konkani Wikipedia in the Making", The Hindu, September 29, 2013.
"Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months", Times of India, September 27, 2013.
"Goa University announces plan to upload Konkani Encyclopaedia on Wikipedia", Navhind Times, September 27, 2013.
"Konkani Vishwakosh Relaunch Tomorrow". The Hindu, September 25, 2013.
Desouza, Vijay. "Goa University Re-releasing Konkani Encyclopaedia on Sept 26", Times of India, September 24, 2013.

More about the event here: http://bit.ly/1aSufAE

Project: Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project (KVDP)

http://bit.ly/183USAg

Goa University in collaboration with CIS-A2K is digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh. This is a two month project where CIS-A2K will work with a group of individuals who will help digitize the encyclopaedia in a time bound manner. All 3632 pages of Konkani Vishwakosh will be digitized.

"Professors, students and anyone with expertise or love for Konkani can come forward to help with the project for which training will be provided. Information in the Konkani Vishwakosh will also be updated as per the current developments," said Vishnu Vardhan. Orientation, training, follow-up workshops will also be organised by CIS-A2K. More about the project here: http://bit.ly/HWEMh7

Boost to Konkani Wikipedia

Konkani Vishwakosh could serve as a ready made source of reference for articles on the Konkani Wikipedia, which is in incubation since its inception in 2006. Konkani Wikipedia editors could use content from the Vishwakosh to build articles on Konkani Wikipedia thereby growing Konkani articles not only in numbers but also in its quality.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-vishwakosh-under-cc-by-sa

Priyadarshini Tadkodkar on Konkani language

subha — 2014-01-31T06:20:11Z

CIS-A2K team interviewed Priyadarshini Tadkodkar about Konkani language. She speaks how editing/contributing to Konkani Wikipedia would help students.

Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team was there in Goa University to conduct a four day long Konkani Wikipedia workshop for the MA Konkani students. During these days Subhashish Panigrahi of CIS-A2K caught up with Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar, Head, Konkani department of Goa University and asked about the brief history of Konkani language. In this video Dr. Tadkodkar shares the origin and movements that has affected Konkani, influence of other languages on it and the documentation process of the language. The Census Department of India, 2001 figures put the number of Konkani speakers in India as 2,489,015. Out of these, around 6 lakh were in Goa, 7 lakh in Karnataka, 3 lakh in Maharashtra, 6 lakh in Kerala and rest live outside of India, either as expatriates or citizens of other countries (NRIs).

Video


Above: Video of Priyadarshini Tadkodkar speaking on Konkani language

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/priyadarshini-tadkodkar-konkani-language

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