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Wikipedia in the Classroom: A Study of the Wikimedia in Education at CHRIST (Deemed to be University)
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-in-the-classroom-a-study-of-the-wikimedia-in-education-program-at-christ-deemed-to-be-university
<b>This is a short study on the Wikimedia in Education (WIE) at Christ University, Bengaluru, which aims to offer an overview of the key objectives and challenges of this project and map its impact on teaching-learning practices in multilingual classrooms. The report has been authored by Ananth Subray, with editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and external review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019–2020.
</b>
<h3>Introduction</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The growth of collaborative and open access platforms such as Wikimedia over the last decade has opened up new avenues to think about access to open educational resources by people across the world. The <a href="https://wikimediafoundation.org/our-work/education/#:~:text=At%20the%20Wikimedia%20Foundation%2C%20we,projects%20for%20their%20learning%20objectives.&text=Key%20pillars%20of%20our%20education,Reading%20Wikipedia%20in%20the%20Classroom.">Wikimedia in Education</a> (WIE) is one such instance of a collaborative effort undertaken with educators and learners across the world, to promote knowledge equity and rethink digital forms of pedagogy, both inside and outside the classroom. The Wikimedia movement has collaborated with <a href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Community/Countries">diverse partners</a> around the world as part of WIE. These collaborators are using Wikipedia as part of educational content, with the objective of enabling better access to content, fostering various skills among students and augmenting content on Wikipedia in local languages As part of this program, students work on new articles, improve existing ones or work on sister projects of Wikipedia such as <a href="https://wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikisource</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikimedia Commons</a> and <a>Wikidata</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">In 2011, the first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program">pilot Education Program</a> in India was started with the help of the Wikimedia Foundation in Pune. The following were some of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program#Update_on_India_Education_Pilot">motivating factors </a>: </p>
<ul><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">“India has the world's largest youth population of 1.2 billion people and it has 28 languages with hundreds of dialects.</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Consumption and creation of content on the Internet is growing fast in India. In 2018, India had over 480 million internet users across the country.[1] </p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">There are 23 Indic languages Wikipedias - but they all have limited content compared to English Wikipedia. The average article count is less than 40,000. There are many strong reasons to increase participation from India - and that is a primary objective of the India Education program.”</p>
</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Later in 2013, after an <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Education_Program/Pune_Pilot_Program_lessons#Motivation">assessment</a> of the pilot project in Pune, discussions with CHRIST (Deemed to be University) in Bengaluru were initiated by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K">Centre for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge</a> (CIS-A2K). After preparing a detailed plan about Wikipedia in Education and CHRIST, the program was started with the help of community members, faculty members from the Department of Languages and people from CIS-A2K. Some of the main objectives of the program were to [2] : </p>
<ul><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Strengthen critical thinking skills in students;</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Develop language proficiency in terms of cohesively presenting an idea or concept;</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Develop the ability to closely read/assess information or data;</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Develop the ability to collaborate in a team environment; and</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Cultivate the ability to be a producer of knowledge than a passive consumer.</p>
</li></ul>
<p><span id="docs-internal-guid-57e1c6bd-7fff-a7b1-77b4-a05f6596ee67"></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">CHRIST has been running Wikipedia in Education for the past 7 years. This study aims to understand the progress of this initiative, and its opportunities and limitations so far, especially with respect to Indian educational institutions engaging with a virtual community through Wikipedia. In particular, students, teachers, and other stakeholders have been an integral part of this online community at CHRIST.</p>
<h3><br /></h3>
<h3>Context</h3>
<div> </div>
<p>“ Wikipedia is the best tool available to us to go digital. We are happy that Wikipedia <span style="text-align: center;">builds in the process and our students also learn.”<br /></span><span style="text-align: center;"> - Dr Anil Pinto, Registrar, Christ University</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Wikipedia is a collaborative knowledge platform, with a vision to "imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge”.[3] The word "Wikipedia" is derived from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick" and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's articles provide links designed to guide the user to related pages with additional information. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by a community of language speakers. Wikipedia currently has more than 54 million articles in more than 300 languages and is supposed to be the largest reference website in the world.[4]</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">After the effort of the Wikimedia Foundation in initiating a pilot program at Pune, a similar collaboration was discussed between CIS-A2K and CHRIST (Deemed to be University). As both institutions have a keen interest in developing content in Indic languages on the Internet, it was an encouraging factor for this collaboration They discussed the various ways in which the program can engage students of the university, including promoting content creation in natural sciences in regional languages, publishing CHRIST (Deemed to be University) books on Wikisource, digitising old/ rare books, in addition to editing and creating articles, especially in their subject areas of study.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Faculty members from the Department of Languages supported the initiative, with the following objectives in mind [5]: </p>
<ul><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Modern forms of teaching/learning such as learning/contributing to Wikipedia are a life-long process that learners can access anytime and anywhere. </p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Information explosion is an ever-increasing phenomenon, and it is imperative to be able to access such information easily. Modern education should meet the needs of a diversity of learners, and Wikipedia being an open platform may be an important aspect in meeting this need. </p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Open knowledge platforms such as Wikipedia are a crucial component of the information society so individuals should possess technological literacy and grasp digital tools of teaching/learning so as to access them easily. </p>
</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Later in November 2013, CHRIST & CIS-A2K signed a <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/cis-a2k-mou-christ-university">Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)</a> to officially start a <a href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Countries/India/Christ_University">Wikipedia in Education initiative</a> to introduce the creation/editing of Wikipedia articles as a component of the Continuous Internal Assessment (CIA) for all undergraduate students studying Kannada, Hindi or Sanskrit as a second language at the university. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Around 900 students were involved in this project in the first iteration. To monitor and train the students the position of Class Ambassadors was created, where two students proficient in the language were selected and given special training to help their peers in the class. The participating students themselves decided upon the topics of the articles to be created/edited by them. Since then every year the WIE at CHRIST has been modified according to the requirement of different stakeholders after undertaking a needs assessment.</p>
<div> </div>
<h3>Research Method and Questions </h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">This study is qualitative in nature, with a focus on key stakeholders of the program, and explores the experience of the participants (student, teacher, trainer, and Wikipedian) to understand their learnings from this experience. Interviews were conducted with students, community members, faculty members, and members of the CIS-A2K team to understand their perspectives on different aspects of the project. A total of 14 interviews were conducted, which included 5 faculty members, 6 students, and 3 community members who were involved with the program in the earlier days of Wikipedia in Education at CHRIST. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The research questions of the study are as follows: </p>
<ul><li>What were the motivations and challenges for different stakeholders (students, faculty and community members) in conducting and participating in the <span style="text-align: justify;">WIE</span> at CHRIST (Deemed to be University)? </li><li>What was the impact observed by these stakeholders as a result of their engagement with this program, (including personal changes/improvements if any)? </li></ul>
<p>The responses were then analysed to consolidate a set of observations about the program. </p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Observations</h3>
<p><strong>Benefits of using Wikipedia in teaching</strong></p>
<p>Using Wikipedia as a pedagogic tool trains students on how to share information related to advanced topics in every discipline with the general audience in an effective manner, as this is sometimes not covered in academic training. Teaching this style of writing is helpful and has a high impact on the way information is accessed by most readers regularly. As the readers and consumers of information on the Internet are increasing day by day, it also offers a lot of scope for students to add content on diverse topics. The first step for CHRIST towards incorporating Wikipedia in the curriculum was to understand that it can be used as an educational tool, for the benefit of the students, such as improving digital literacy skills, writing skills and using the local language on the internet.</p>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>How to inculcate Wikipedia in higher education?</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">When the WIE was started at CHRIST, there was a small change in the plans for the course and the continuous internal assessment (CIA). Students contributed to Wikipedia projects by making edits or creating articles, proofreading pages on Wikisource, etc. Here faculty members or community members with the help of the CIS-A2K team introduced the students to Wikipedia and its interface, and also monitored the student's <a href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Countries/India/Christ_University#Reports">activity and progress</a>. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Students created articles related to subjects of their specialisation, and academic topics which are mostly read by the students of the same age group. Since these sets of articles are widely read, it attracts the attention of the Wikipedia communities. They correct mistakes if any and teach the students basic aspects of editing and article creation. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Wikipedia in Education is facilitated with the help of a faculty member who is familiar with Wikipedia and its community. Having faculty members with no experience in editing Wikipedia is not efficient and as they can't effectively use Wikipedia as a pedagogic tool. Also, it will be difficult to answer the students’ queries and properly guide them. While it may not be possible for faculty members to equip themselves with advanced skills, they are encouraged to learn the basic aspects of Wikipedia before teaching the students. This gives them the confidence to respond to the concerns of the students in doing assignments on Wikimedia platforms.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> Changes made in the WIE at CHRIST based on the students’ feedback and community requirements are as follows[6]:</p>
<table class="plain">
<thead>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Year</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> Changes made in the program at CHRIST (Deemed to be University) over the last 7 years</p>
</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>2013-14 </p>
</td>
<td>
<div>
<ul><li> Wikipedia in Education was started to increase the awareness about the Wikimedia community among students. </li></ul>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>2014-15 </p>
</td>
<td>
<div> </div>
<ul><li>The use of sandbox was explained and it was introduced to students</li></ul>
<ul><li>A peer review system was started to enhance the quality of the work</li></ul>
<ul><li>New evaluation methods were adapted. </li></ul>
<ul><li>Wikisource was Introduced to the students.</li></ul>
<div> </div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>2015-16</p>
</td>
<td>
<div> </div>
<ul><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">A certificate course & Wikimedia internship was introduced to attract more students to the Wikimedia world.</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Ambassadors were selected to have multiple touchpoint systems. </p>
</li></ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>2016-17</p>
</td>
<td>
<div> </div>
<ul><li> Different methods were chosen to increase awareness of the work done by the students, such as social media promotion. </li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Students were involved in a <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2016">national conference</a> to meet different community members. </p>
</li></ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>2017-18</p>
</td>
<td>
<div> </div>
<ul><li> Community members were involved in different steps. </li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Faculty members started to do the evaluations of the articles.</p>
</li></ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>2018-19 </p>
</td>
<td>
<ul><li> New methods were adopted to promote the work done at the University.</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Community members started reviewing the articles written by the students.</p>
</li></ul>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p> <span style="text-align: justify;"> </span> </p>
<p> <strong>How is students writing a Wikipedia article for their assignments helpful in achieving larger learning objectives? </strong></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">Wikimedia in Education opened up a number of ways in which students get to choose and work on their favourite topics, areas of interest, and aid teachers in designing new and innovative assignments. </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Faculty members have also found different tools to evaluate the assignment, </span><a style="text-align: justify;" href="https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/">track the student’s work</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> and to spot </span><a style="text-align: justify;" href="https://copyvios.toolforge.org/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=Draft%3AVaval%2C_the_King_of_Carnival&noredirect=1.">plagiarism </a><span style="text-align: justify;">of assignments among students. Writing assignments on a Wikimedia platform helps students to understand the importance of group collaboration and teamwork. Wikipedia helps the faculty members to imbibe group collaboration among students and monitor individual progress with the help of "</span><a style="text-align: justify;" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:User_contributions">User contribution"</a><span style="text-align: justify;">. Some of the tools developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, such as the </span><a style="text-align: justify;" href="https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/">Program & events dashboard</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> help aculty members to evaluate the work of the students and monitor each edit done by all the students. </span></p>
<p><span id="docs-internal-guid-ca68618f-7fff-bb2c-3fb3-d799168d67ed"></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> <strong>How is Wikipedia in Education helpful for community members? </strong></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">A group of 20-25 students from over 1000 students from each batch contributing to various topics on Wikipedia helps the community to generate </span><span style="text-align: justify;">more content</span><span style="text-align: justify;"> and enhance the usefulness of the Wikipedia projects that have been engaged with as part of the program. </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The content created as part of the WIE is reviewed by language experts and subject experts which helps the community to create more quality articles in less time. Since the articles created by students are in the sandbox, after reviewing these articles they are moved to the main <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_is_an_article%3F#Namespace">namespace</a> by the community members with minor changes. In Wikimedia in Education, more students gain skills and knowledge related to Wikipedia which can result in a good number of student volunteers in the community and potential long-term contributors. Some of the students make it a hobby to write articles on Wikipedia even after completing the course; this increases the potential of having more long-term contributors and helps to strengthen the existing community.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Last but not least, it has benefits beyond the Wikipedia community and classroom. Wikipedia content is under a free license for the entire world. As such, the students' work translates into aiding all those who use Wikipedia — which, as recent studies indicate, means most Internet users.[7]</p>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>What do students think about Wikipedia assignments?</strong></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">Some students communicated that they are very confused about Wikipedia, and some feel it is easy to contribute and engage with it. Some students shared that they initially faced difficulty but when a faculty member helped them clear their doubts, it enabled them to improve their perception of learning this tool. </span></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">The majority of the students who responded to interviews prefer a </span><a style="text-align: justify;" href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Countries/India/Christ_University#CIA%E2%80%99s">Wikipedia assignment</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> over a traditional one when they are provided with frequent training on how to contribute to Wikipedia. The students who disliked the assignment usually noted that it was more difficult than just writing a regular paper in an offline word processing software. Those who liked the Wikipedia assignment commented that their project resulted in an above-average group paper that would be seen and appreciated by others. </span></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">Some of the students at the university appreciated Wikipedia in Education as their work is read by the wider public, and the fact that they are creating useful digital content on the internet, rather than just writing assignments on paper to be read by faculty members. </span></p>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Limitations of the program</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Despite its many positive aspects, the project comes with certain limitations as well. Students may or may not be well versed with the language, especially with respect to the community standards on quality and expectations of active community members, and they may not be able to create the article as per the same. In this situation, sometimes the community may get annoyed by looking at such articles. Trainers/faculty members should pay more attention to these kinds of students or class ambassadors to guide these students in the whole process.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">During the orientations, some of the students may not pay attention properly and won't follow the instructions, which leads to incorrectly prepared articles and edits. Also, students may vandalise the Wikipedia pages while contributing and burden the communities. In such cases, the trainer/faculty members should monitor them thoroughly with the program & events dashboard and correct them if any students vandalise a Wikipedia page. </p>
<p><span id="docs-internal-guid-e399ec4c-7fff-a5f4-3175-ea2384052e02"></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<h3>Conclusions and Recommendations</h3>
<p>This study helped us understand the challenges and advantages observed by the students with both the opportunity and access to Wikipedia platforms to communicate on advanced topics in science/higher education to the general public. One observation from the students who took part in the <span style="text-align: justify;">WIE</span> was that they had improved their own capacity to assess the quality of the material they used in order to write the articles, because of the visible nature of Wikipedia. </p>
<p>While implementing Wikipedia in Education at Christ we became aware of several aspects that should be kept in mind before introducing students to the Wikipedia movement. These are a few observations from the interviews: : </p>
<ul><li>The faculty members who are part of the <span style="text-align: justify;">WIE</span> should be Wikipedians, or at least they should know the basic aspects of editing Wikipedia, as this will help them to create more awareness and interest among the student community. If the faculty members are not well versed with Wikipedia and its editing skills it will be difficult for them to use Wikipedia as a pedagogic tool in an effective manner. Some efforts to train the faculty members of CHRIST were made at regular intervals during the program.</li><li>The number of students involved in the education program should be proportionate to the number of in-charge faculty members. This helps them give more attention to the students and they will be able to learn more about Wikipedia. </li><li>In order to help the students learn and contribute effectively, , they need to be trained at regular intervals and provided with the user manuals/videos, etc. This will enrich the student's knowledge about Wikipedia and editing skills. Also, monitoring the students will be helpful to know the progress of the student's activity. </li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Wikipedia has articulated <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style">style guidelines</a>, and students should be given information in detail on these at the beginning of the project, as this helps them to avoid many mistakes.</p>
</li><li>Students need to create their own illustrations/diagrams and upload them to Wikimedia Commons on a free license, and then use them on Wikipedia articles. This will help them to understand the workflow of creating an illustration and also give more value to the article. </li><li>Strategies to follow up with the students who have graduated need to be prepared before starting the <span style="text-align: justify;">WIE</span>. This will help us to retain the interest of students who have graduated, and potentially convert them to Wikimedians who will continue to contribute in the long-term. </li></ul>
<p> </p>
<p>This short report is an attempt to consolidate and analyse our experiences and learnings from working on the <span style="text-align: justify;">WIE</span> at CHRIST( Deemed to be University) over the last few years. We have also tried to capture some of the many challenges and opportunities with initiating and building strategies for teaching-learning with Indian languages and open knowledge platforms like Wikipedia in the classroom. As we move towards increasingly online modes of pedagogy and training, we hope that these observations will be helpful in the process of building and sustaining such initiatives in education programs across various Indian language Wikipedia communities. </p>
<div> </div>
<h3>References</h3>
<p>[1] Keelery, Sandhya. “<a class="external-link" href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/255146/number-of-internet-users-in-india/#:~:text=In%202018%2C%20India%20had%20over,for%20the%20south%20Asian%20country">Total Internet Users in India.</a>” Statista, October 16, 2020. </p>
<p>[2] The objectives are as per the discussion among the stakeholders in the early days of Wikimedia in Education at CHRIST.</p>
<p>[3] “<a class="external-link" href="https://onbeing.org/programs/jimmy-wales-the-sum-of-all-human-knowledge-2/">Jimmy Wales - The Sum of All Human Knowledge.</a>” The On Being Project. Krista Tippett, September 8, 2016. </p>
<p>[4] “<a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About">Wikipedia:About.</a>” In Wikipedia. Accessed February 3, 2021.</p>
<p>[5] These objectives are paraphrased from the MoU signed with CHRIST ( Deemed to be) University in 2013. </p>
<p>[6] Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. “<a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2017-2018_round_2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Progress_report_form#Wikimedia_Education_Program">The Centre for Internet and Society/Progress Report</a>” Accessed February 3, 2021. </p>
<p>[7] Weiqin Chen and Rolf Reber, 2011. “<a class="external-link" href="http://122.155.1.128/icce2011/program/proceedings/pdf/C6_S14_141S.pdf">Writing Wikipedia articles as course assignment</a>” Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Computers in Education, accessed February 3, 2021.</p>
<h3><br /></h3>
<h3>Notes </h3>
<div>[1] See Annexures<a href="https://cis-india.org/A2K_WEP_Annexure%20III" class="external-link"> I</a>,<a href="https://cis-india.org/A2K_WEP_Annexure%20II" class="external-link"> II </a>and<a href="https://cis-india.org/A2K_WEP_Annexure%20III" class="external-link"> III</a> for the interview questionnaires for students, faculty members and community members. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>[2] Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki<a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_in_the_Classroom:_A_Study_of_the_Wikimedia_in_Education_Program_at_CHRIST_(Deemed_to_be_University)"> here. </a></div>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-in-the-classroom-a-study-of-the-wikimedia-in-education-program-at-christ-deemed-to-be-university'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-in-the-classroom-a-study-of-the-wikimedia-in-education-program-at-christ-deemed-to-be-university</a>
</p>
No publisherAnanth SubrayA2K ResearchAccess to Knowledge2021-05-15T12:33:31ZBlog EntryUsing the Wikimedia sphere for the revitalization of small and underrepresented languages in India
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/using-wikimedia-sphere-for-revitalization-of-small-and-underrepresented-languages-in-india
<b>This report explores opportunities within the Wikimedia movement and projects to help revitalise small and underrepresented languages in India and provide recommendations to CIS’s Access to Knowledge team in furthering this effort. The report is mainly based on a roundtable conversation on Digital Access in Bhubaneswar with a diverse range of backgrounds and professions, including independent researchers, representatives from non-profit organizations, retired government officials, Wikimedia contributors (both Odia and Santali), ecological activists, directors of research institutes, consultants, and journalists. This was organized by the Access to Knowledge team of CIS in collaboration with Vasundhara, Bhubaneswar.</b>
<p>This strategic note discusses a broad program idea of offering barrier-free open access to resources in various underrepresented languages in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Languages spoken in the Republic of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 78.05% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians. Languages spoken by the remaining 2.31% of the population belong to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austroasiatic_languages">Austroasiatic</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Tibetan_languages">Sino–Tibetan</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kra%E2%80%93Dai_languages">Tai–Kadai</a>, and a few other minor language families and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_isolate">isolates</a>. According to the People's Linguistic Survey of India, India has the second highest number of languages (780), after Papua New Guinea (840). Ethnologue lists a lower number of 456.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.unesco.org/languages-atlas/index.php"><span>UNESCO endangerment classification</span></a> is as follows:</p>
<ol> </ol><ol>
<li><i>Vulnerable</i>: most children speak the language, but it may be restricted to certain domains (e.g., home)</li>
<li><i>Definitely endangered</i>: children no longer learn the language as a 'mother tongue' in the home</li>
<li><i>Severely endangered</i>: language is spoken by grandparents and older generations; while the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves</li>
<li><i>Critically endangered</i>: the youngest speakers are grandparents and older, and they speak the language partially and infrequently</li>
<li><i>Extinct</i>: there are no speakers left</li>
</ol><ol> </ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">North-East India is home to more than 200 languages, out of which 82 are listed as <i>Vulnerable</i>, 63 as <i>Definitely Endangered</i>, 6 as <i>Severely Endangered</i>, 46 as <i>Critically Endangered </i>and 6 as <i>Extinct </i>(<a href="https://www.kaggle.com/the-guardian/extinct-languages"><span>The Guardian Dataset</span></a>). Arunachal Pradesh is the state with the highest number of languages, with as many as 66 languages spoken there, while West Bengal has the highest number of scripts, nine, and around 38 languages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The state of Odisha has 62 Scheduled Tribes who speak as many as 74 dialects. Their ethos, ideology, worldview, value orientations and cultural heritage are rich and varied. Odisha has the unique distinction of having 93 different Scheduled Caste communities spread over 30 districts and 314 blocks of the state having different dialects. Apart from the languages of the North-East and the state of Odisha, there are several other languages all over India that deserve better representation on the Internet. While a handful of these languages enjoy status and visibility as official languages of the states and thereby hold some currency as widely spoken languages in their linguistic territories, there are many more languages that do not have speakers counting beyond a few hundred. Examples include the Bellari language (Spoken in Karnataka by 1000 speakers), the Toda language (Spoken in Tamil Nadu by 1600 speakers) and the Naiki language (Spoken in Maharashtra by 1500 speakers). What these languages do share in common with the languages of the North-East mentioned earlier is that they all lack free and open source knowledge and data.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some of these languages are the official languages of the states and are widely spoken in this region. On the other hand, some of the languages have a few hundred native speakers. However, irrespective of the size of the native population or official status of the language, they all lack free and open source knowledge & data.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These languages show a range of marked cross-linguistic features which pose several interesting questions to Linguistic theories and speech processing research. Moreover, the close geographical proximity of these languages makes them vulnerable to changes in multiple linguistic levels, making these languages an excellent resource to study language change. Despite this, these languages severely lack digital preservation. One of the major reasons that contribute to the lack of resources is the difficulty in human access to some of the areas in these regions. Moreover, with English and Hindi being used as a lingua franca in these regions, the actual number of speakers proficient in their native language is much fewer than the number shown in the census reports. This makes it more important than ever to initiate a preservation process which does not primarily depend on fieldwork while also increasing the presence of the language in the digital sphere.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As language technologies advance and more sophisticated tools are built using Artificial Intelligence, the divide between low resource languages and others is likely to get even larger as a common prerequisite of these advanced systems is the existence of a large amount of digital data. Low resource languages are at a risk of being left behind.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Research on these languages by researchers are mostly conducted by collecting data personally, which causes a huge hindrance to the research process, as most of it remains as a private collection or published in closed journals. Moreover, data collection through fieldwork is particularly challenging in this region due to the restricted access to most of the disturbed areas.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The goal of this program is to facilitate the study of these languages by making existing resources discoverable and building open-source structured datasets and tools using the Wikimedia sphere to enrich the language research landscape of small and underrepresented Indian languages.</p>
<p><b>Role of CIS-A2K</b></p>
<ul>
<li>To design and commission relevant research studies in collaboration with language communities to define the premises of the program. The plan is to work with languages which are being written in single or multiple scripts in the pilot phase.</li>
<li>To develop strategies regarding the integration of language datasets with Wikimedia projects</li>
<li>Skill building of volunteers and community leaders in Wikimedia projects</li>
<li>Structure of local knowledge to be compiled for contribution</li>
<li>To identify the specific Wiki projects such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Lingua Libre etc to build the archives of these languages</li>
<li>Designing outreach and knowledge dissemination processes</li>
<li>To develop partnerships with other academic, social, cultural and research institutions in the language sector for the sustainability of the project</li>
<li>Material support - Sound recorders, microphones, hard discs, laptop, scanner, internet hardware</li>
<li>Financial support - Remuneration of intern/fellow, internet data recharge</li>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Specific objectives</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ol> </ol><ol>
<li>Empowering the communities by enhancing digital literacy and connecting them with the world of knowledge and people outside.</li>
<li>Revitalizing/enriching the languages by increasing their use, coverage and depth using technological interventions.</li>
<li>Creating an ecosystem for developing language learning resources and tools; particularly, in the context of the New Education Policy.</li>
<li>Enabling scholars and researchers to overcome the challenge of finding appropriate data and expanding the knowledge on these languages.</li>
<li>By using the Wikimedia sphere, the infrastructural and technological support is secured, so that these languages are able to function in the digital world.</li>
</ol><ol> </ol>
<p>It is important to realise that these objectives can introduce new dynamics into other spheres of activity, such as education and the development of language.</p>
<p><b>Methodology</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p>Our target languages broadly belong to two sets:</p>
<ol>
<li>Languages which are primarily spoken in various states of India and have some or no digital presence on the internet.</li>
<li>Endangered languages which have extremely limited or no digital presence.</li>
</ol>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Survey of ongoing work</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Several individuals and institutions are working on languages across the globe. There are significant initiatives in India also to revitalise the small languages in the digital sphere. Some of these are listed in the reference section at the end. An exhaustive survey of all such efforts will be done to map the present status as well as a listing of stakeholders. The target languages for A2K’s future work and the potential collaborators will also be identified through these exercises.</p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Digital Dictionary Making</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A dictionary is a vital resource for any language learning. The idea of collaborative dictionaries using platforms like Wiktionary or Wikidata Lexemes eliminates the need for expert lexicographers and terminologists and rather follows the method in which the users enter data as new entries, definitions, and so on, and the same is reviewed by editors, once published. An offline e-dictionary application using this dataset could be developed to overcome the problem of sparse internet connectivity where the user is only expected to download & install the application once and use the dictionary offline at any moment.</p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Data Acquisition Strategies</b></p>
<ol> </ol><ol>
<li>Leveraging Crowdsourcing using <a href="https://lingualibre.org/wiki/LinguaLibre:Main_Page"><span>LinguaLibre</span></a> for the creation of Speech CorporaGiven the scarcity of text and speech corpora for these low-resource languages, the main potential source for dataset creation is by crowdsourcing.</li>
<li>Using Optical Character Recognition techniques -</li>
</ol>
<p>The digitisation of texts in the public domain would be done and made available freely by uploading them on Wikimedia projects. The digital copy will be made machine-readable using Optical Character Recognition (OCR).</p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Processing the acquired data</b></p>
<ol>
<li>Preprocess</li>
<li>Processing Speech Corpora</li>
<li>Processing Bilingual Parallel text Corpora</li>
</ol>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Housing datasets</b></p>
<ol>
<li><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page"><span>Wiki Commons</span></a> for media files</li>
<li><a><span>Wikidata</span></a> for Lexemes</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page"><span>Wikisource</span></a> for texts</li>
</ol>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Capacity Building workshops</b></p>
<ul>
<li>Promoting the language among the young speakers of the community, since they are the future of the language and if it survives, it will belong to them.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Help language speakers possess up-to-date digital competencies and feel confident about them to actively participate in the digital world and increase content in their own native language.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Promoting contributions on platforms like <a href="https://storyweaver.org.in/"><span>Storyweaver</span></a>, <a href="https://prathambooks.org/"><span>Pratham Books</span></a>, <a href="https://www.eklavya.in/index.php/about-us-eklavya"><span>Eklavya</span></a> etc.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Promote the upskilling of native speakers and other disseminators</b></p>
<ul>
<li>Facilitate knowledge exchange through participatory mechanisms both virtually and face-to-face.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The potential communities would be introduced to <a href="https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incubator:Main_Page"><span>Incubator</span></a> for building new Wikimedia projects</li>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Educational development</b></p>
<ul>
<li>Applying Open access philosophy to advance language pedagogy.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Develop language learning resources and tools, particularly, in the context of the New Education Policy.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>References</b></p>
<ol>
<li>Wikipedia articles</li>
<li>SCSTRTI, Odisha - <a href="https://www.scstrti.in/index.php/resources/mle-initiative/bilingual-dictionaries"><span>https://www.scstrti.in/index.php/resources/mle-initiative/bilingual-dictionaries</span></a></li>
<li>Most populous languages of Odisha - <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Languages_of_Odisha.svg"><span>https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Languages_of_Odisha.svg</span></a> </li>
<li>People’s Linguistic Survey of India - <a href="https://www.peopleslinguisticsurvey.org/"><span>https://www.peopleslinguisticsurvey.org/</span></a></li>
<li>The state and fate of linguistic diversity and inclusion in the NLP world - <a href="https://aclanthology.org/2020.acl-main.560/"><span>https://aclanthology.org/2020.acl-main.560/</span></a></li>
<li>Bhasha India - <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/bhashaindia"><span>https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/bhashaindia</span></a> </li>
<li>Omniglot - <a href="https://www.omniglot.com/index.htm"><span>https://www.omniglot.com/index.htm</span></a></li>
<li>Bharatavani - <a href="https://bharatavani.in/"><span>https://bharatavani.in/</span></a></li>
<li>Storyweaver - <a href="https://storyweaver.org.in/"><span>https://storyweaver.org.in/</span></a> </li>
<li>Dimasa Thairili - <a href="https://www.dimasathairili.com/"><span>https://www.dimasathairili.com/</span></a></li>
<li>SIL International - <a href="https://www.sil.org/"><span>https://www.sil.org/</span></a></li>
<li>Ethnologue - <a href="https://www.ethnologue.com/"><span>https://www.ethnologue.com/</span></a></li>
<li>Global Recordings Network - <a href="https://globalrecordings.net/en/"><span>https://globalrecordings.net/en/</span></a></li>
<li>Glottolog - <a href="https://glottolog.org/"><span>https://glottolog.org/</span></a></li>
<li>Endangered Languages Project - <a href="https://endangeredlanguages.com/"><span>https://endangeredlanguages.com/</span></a></li>
</ol>
<hr />
<p>This is a report by Subodh Kulkarni with editorial oversight and support by Tanveer Hasan and Soni Wadhwa. Click to download the PDF <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/files/underrepresented-languages-and-wikimedia-projects.pdf">here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/using-wikimedia-sphere-for-revitalization-of-small-and-underrepresented-languages-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/using-wikimedia-sphere-for-revitalization-of-small-and-underrepresented-languages-in-india</a>
</p>
No publishersubodhCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K Research2024-02-10T04:35:45ZBlog EntryUnderstanding the Data Gaps on Wikidata Concerning Heritage Structures of West Bengal
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/understanding-the-data-gaps-on-wikidata-concerning-heritage-structures-of-west-bengal
<b>This is a short study on identifying the data gaps related to heritage structures in West Bengal on Wikidata, and potential strategies to address the same. The report is authored by Bodhisattwa Mandal, with editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha and external review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019-2020.
</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Wikidata is a free and open repository of structured and linked data, hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, built collaboratively[1] by human volunteers and robots from all over the world[2]. This platform, with an initial intention to be used within Wikimedia projects as a high quality secondary database [3], first started by centrally linking Wikipedia articles about the same topics in different languages[4][5][6][7][8], but soon it started linking with external databases. </p>
<p><strong id="docs-internal-guid-82468dc9-7fff-a2c3-263c-a0aebac3c1a7"><br /><span style="text-align: justify;"></span></strong></p>
<h2><strong id="docs-internal-guid-82468dc9-7fff-a2c3-263c-a0aebac3c1a7">Introduction to Wikidata</strong></h2>
<p> <span style="text-align: justify;">Wikidata is designed to be structured as a Resource Description Framework or RDF model which describes statements in the form of triplets of subject–predicate–object. In Wikidata, subject–predicate–object is termed as item–property–value. Items on Wikidata can represent every possible object, concept or topic in human knowledge which passes a certain threshold of defined </span><a style="text-align: justify;" class="external-link">notability</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> and are represented by unique Q numbers. The actual data of an item is called value, which is pre-defined by the data type, be it strings, numbers, dates, url links, coordinates, musical notations etc. or even other items. Properties, represented by unique P numbers, describe the data value of items. The items, properties and values are language independent and thus totally machine-readable, although for human comfort and understanding, one can describe </span><a style="text-align: justify;" class="external-link" href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Items">items</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> in their own languages by adding or translating</span><a style="text-align: justify;" class="external-link" href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Statements"> labels, descriptions or aliases</a><span style="text-align: justify;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">Due to the machine-readable triplet structure of Wikidata, the database can be easily queried to find answers, which might not be otherwise possible from a list of unstructured contents such as Wikipedia articles. To retrieve and manipulate RDF data formats in triplets, we require a semantic query language for RDF databases named <a class="external-link" href="https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/">SPARQL</a>. Through <a class="external-link" href="https://query.wikidata.org/">Wikidata query service</a>, one can use SPARQL and retrieve data and the prevailing gaps on Wikidata and visualize in different ways.</span></p>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Wikidata in West Bengal, India</h2>
<div> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/Wikidata_items_map_with_difference_India_October_2018_to_May_2019.png/image_preview" alt="Wikidata_items_map_with_difference,_India,_October_2018_to_May_2019" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Wikidata_items_map_with_difference,_India,_October_2018_to_May_2019" /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;"> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><em><a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikidata_items_map_with_difference,_India,_October_2018_to_May_2019.png">Massive imports of coordinates for places in West Bengal happened between October 2018 and May 2019 on Wikidata as reflected by the map generated using Resemble.js</a></em></span></div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">Wikidata activities around India have been organized around India for almost 4 years under the </span><a style="text-align: justify;" class="external-link">WikiProject India </a><span style="text-align: justify;">umbrella. Targeted approaches to fill data gaps on different topics have been pursued through data-thons and campaigns in these years and community strength has been aimed to increase through workshops and skill sharing initiatives. </span></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">Being part of that initiative, the Indian state of West Bengal has seen a lot of activities around Wikidata in recent years. Under the <a class="external-link">WikiProject umbrella</a>, Wikidata volunteers have been working together to build data on different topics related to the state, its demographics, culture, heritage, education, health, politics, language etc. As heritage has been the prime focus of the Wikimedia community members of West Bengal, in this essay, we will identify the data gaps related to the topic through SPARQL query and explore reasons for the same, if any, through interviews of active volunteers who have been working on this area for years.</span></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">Wikimedia community members have been working on documenting different forms of heritage since 2011, when they organized <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Kolkata">Wikipedia Takes Kolkata photo-walk</a> for the first time. Since then, they have organized eight more Wikipedia Takes Kolkata photo-walks, <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Wiki_Exploration">11 Wiki Exploration projects in 9 districts of the state</a>, 2 editions of prestigious Wiki Loves Monuments in India <a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2018_in_India">2018 </a>and <a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2019_in_India">2019</a> and several other documentation projects organized organically or single-handedly and by doing so they have uploaded several thousands of photographs related to heritage structures and GLAM collections on Wikimedia Commons. </span></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">In this essay, we will focus on the photo-walks and explorations which were conducted to document heritage structures of West Bengal. We will focus on two basic types of data which should be there in every dataset on heritage structures, i.e. a) location, and b) image, and we will find out if there is any significant gap there using SPARQL queries. </span></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;"></span></p>
<h2>Photo-walks and Wiki Explorations in West Bengal</h2>
<div> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/Map_of_KMC_graded_heritage_buildings_generated_by_Wikidata_SPARQL_query.png/image_preview" alt="Map of KMC" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Map of KMC" /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;"> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><em>Map of KMC heritage buildings generated from Wikidata query <a class="external-link" href="https://w.wiki/Tir" rel="nofollow">https://w.wiki/Tir</a></em></div>
<div> </div>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">Let’s start with the nine consecutive series of Wikipedia takes Kolkata photo-walks which aims to photo-document heritage buildings and structures of Kolkata. To understand the data gap related to the heritage buildings, we will examine the presence of graded heritage buildings and structures enlisted by </span><a style="text-align: justify;" class="external-link" href="https://www.kmcgov.in/KMCPortal/downloads/Graded_List_of_Heritage_Buildings_Grade_I_IIA_IIB.pdf">Kolkata Municipal Corporation</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> (KMC) on Wikidata through different SPARQL queries. Wikidata now contains </span><a style="text-align: justify;" class="external-link" href="https://w.wiki/Tit">923 heritage buildings and structures listed by KMC</a><span style="text-align: justify;">, but out of them 26.65% have </span><a style="text-align: justify;" class="external-link" href="https://w.wiki/Tin">images</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> and only 18.53% have </span><a style="text-align: justify;" class="external-link" href="https://w.wiki/Tir">coordinates</a><span style="text-align: justify;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">Although 81.47% of the items of the heritage structures were missing coordinates, but they gave fairly good idea about their location, all of the items had municipal wards and streets connected with them, utilizing which, photographers and travellers are expected to explore the sites easily. However, while testing the items of the wards, it was noticed that however all the 144 wards contain coordinates, but they all lack a crucial property which can denote their area of location i.e. the <a class="external-link" href="https://w.wiki/Tix">geoshape data</a>. While coordinates can denote the exact location of certain parts of an area, it is misleading when it comes to a larger area, which requires geoshape to better describe the location. While testing the street data, it was found that both geoshape and coordinate data are lacking for the streets, which makes them extremely difficult to <a class="external-link" href="https://w.wiki/V6v">locate</a>.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/Map_of_temples_in_West_Bengal_generated_by_Wikidata_SPARQL_query.png/image_preview" alt="Map_of_temples_in_West_Bengal_generated_by_Wikidata_SPARQL_query" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Map_of_temples_in_West_Bengal_generated_by_Wikidata_SPARQL_query" /><br /></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="text-align: left;">Map of temples in West Bengal generated from Wikidata query </span><a style="text-align: left;" class="external free" href="https://w.wiki/Tj7" rel="nofollow">https://w.wiki/Tj7</a></em></p>
<p> <span style="text-align: justify;">For the last 3 years, Wikimedia volunteers from West Bengal have also been involved in Wiki Exploration projects to remote parts of the state documenting temples, mosques, sculptures etc., many of which have not been documented online before. Few hundreds of heritage structures in 9 districts of the state were documented and thousands of photographs under this project have been uploaded to </span><a style="text-align: justify;" class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wiki_Exploration_Program">Wikimedia Commons</a><span style="text-align: justify;">. Now, if we test the Wikidata presence of the temples situated in West Bengal, it can be noticed that </span><a style="text-align: justify;" class="external-link" href="https://w.wiki/V6w">435 temples have items</a><span style="text-align: justify;">, out of which only 196 items have </span><a style="text-align: justify;" class="external-link" href="https://w.wiki/Tj8">images</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> and only 79 have </span><a style="text-align: justify;" class="external-link" href="https://w.wiki/Tj7">coordinates</a><span style="text-align: justify;">. however 302 of them have their location pin-pointed to the village, ward, town or city level. Similar to the previous case, although there are 40,359 items for villages located in West Bengal, only 0.017% have coordinates while none have </span><a style="text-align: justify;" class="external-link" href="https://w.wiki/TjR">geoshape data.</a></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">From the above two scenarios, it can be easily concluded from the SPARQL queries, that there has been a significant amount of data gap. Both the datasets contain significant lack of location data and images. The second scenario even lacks data on the temples itself.</span></p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Challenges of Contributing to Wikidata in/from West Bengal</h2>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">Now, to understand why there are huge gaps in the data, we have interviewed four volunteers from West Bengal who are involved in these two kinds of projects, three of them are Wikimedia contributors for five-ten years and one of them is relatively new to the movement. They all upload heritage photographs to Wikimedia Commons and 2 of them contribute to Wikidata. All of them agreed that due to lack of suitable hardware, they could not document the exact coordinate data while photo-documenting heritage structures. GPS devices or full-frame cameras with built-in GPS are expensive and are not affordable to many. Interviewees have also pointed out that due to lack of proper training on how to document heritage structures properly, photographers and amaetur researchers miss out vital points of documentation and thus increase data gaps. Restricted access to private heritage structures like temples maintained by families or private heritage buildings and their documents, lack of proper existing documentation along with analogue and digital metadata, and rapid destruction of built heritage due to lack of maintenance or improper restoration procedures etc. are also the reasons for data gaps. While answering the question about why photographs are not converted fully into data, they point out that it might be a burden for photographers to learn about data entry in Wikidata, as this is out of their area of interest and workflow. As noted by an interviewee, ‘the nature of work for Wikidata does not match with photographers' workflow.’ However, they also stressed on the need to conduct training programmes on Wikidata for photographers and interested people involved in documentation to let them know the importance of structured data in the area of heritage documentation.</span></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;"></span></p>
<h2>Recommendations</h2>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">From the observations of this short study, it is recommended that volunteers working on heritage documentation in West Bengal should be supported with suitable hardware to document coordinates. Frequent training programs should be conducted, preferably by experts, for volunteers on how to document heritage structures in a professional way, so that data gaps remain minimal. Training on Wikidata should be conducted for photographers to let them understand the importance of structured data in the field of heritage documentation. It is also recommended to increase interaction among the Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons volunteers, to understand each other's work flow and strategically modify those to provide optimal results.</span></p>
<p> </p>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-6cb506ac-7fff-3519-c2a4-4b192e13b68b">
<h2 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">References </h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">[1] Vrandečić, Denny (2012).<a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2187980.2188242"> "Wikidata: a new platform for collaborative data collection"</a>. Proceedings of the 21st international conference companion on World Wide Web - WWW '12 Companion. Lyon, France: ACM Press: 1063.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier"> doi</a>:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1145%2F2187980.2188242">10.1145/2187980.2188242</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number"> ISBN</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-1-4503-1230-1">978-1-4503-1230-1</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">[2] Vrandečić, Denny; Krötzsch, Markus (2014-09-23).<a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2661061.2629489"> "Wikidata: a free collaborative knowledgebase"</a>. Communications of the ACM. 57 (10): 78–85.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier"> doi</a>:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1145%2F2629489">10.1145/2629489</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">[3] Vrandečić, Denny (2012). </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">[4] Roth, Mathew (30 March 2012). <a href="https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/30/the-wikipedia-data-revolution/">"The Wikipedia data revolution"</a>. Wikimedia Foundation Blog.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">[5] Pintscher, Lydia (14 January 2013).<a href="http://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/01/14/first-steps-of-wikidata-in-the-hungarian-wikipedia/"> "First steps of Wikidata in the Hungarian Wikipedia"</a>. Wikimedia Deutschland Blog.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">[6] Pintscher, Lydia (30 January 2013).<a href="https://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/01/30/wikidata-coming-to-the-next-two-wikipedias/">"Wikidata coming to the next two Wikipedias"</a>. Wikimedia Deutschland Blog.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">[7] Pintscher, Lydia (15 February 2013). <a href="https://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/02/13/wikidata-live-on-the-english-wikipedia/">"Wikidata live on the English Wikipedia"</a>. Wikimedia Deutschland Blog. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">[8] Pintscher, Lydia (6 March 2013). <a href="https://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/03/06/wikidata-now-live-on-all-wikipedias/">"Wikidata now live on all Wikipedias"</a>. Wikimedia Deutschland Blog.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Notes</strong></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">[1] The query results were generated during early 2020. The results may vary at the time of publication of this article. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">[2] See<a href="https://cis-india.org/A2K-Wikidata-Annexure" class="external-link"> Annexure I</a> for the interview questionnaire.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">[3] Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Understanding_the_data_gaps_on_Wikidata_concerning_heritage_structures_of_West_Bengal">here</a>.</p>
</span>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/understanding-the-data-gaps-on-wikidata-concerning-heritage-structures-of-west-bengal'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/understanding-the-data-gaps-on-wikidata-concerning-heritage-structures-of-west-bengal</a>
</p>
No publisherBodhisattwa MandalA2K ResearchAccess to Knowledge2021-05-15T12:31:40ZBlog EntryResearch Studies on Indian Language Wikimedia Projects 2019-21
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-studies-on-indian-language-wikimedia-projects
<b>This is a compilation of the final reports from a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019-2021, on an array of topics related to Indian language Wikimedia projects. The projects were undertaken by Subodh Kulkarni, Bodhisattwa Mandal, Bhuvana Meenakshi Koteeswaran, Ananth Subray, Satpal Dandiwal and Nitesh Gill, with research oversight and editorial support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and internal review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Ambika Tandon.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">See the full report on Wikimedia Commons <a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Research_Studies_on_Indian_Language_Wikimedia_Projects.pdf&page=1">here</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Click to download the full report <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/research-studies-on-indian-language-wikimedia-projects" class="internal-link">here</a></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">Wikipedia and its many sister projects have been rich sites of study for researchers across the world for many years now. The online encyclopedia presents a microcosm of the real world in terms of the dynamics of knowledge production and use, including content and infrastructure, and community interaction among many other things. Research about Wikimedia projects and platforms has been undertaken in various languages, and from multidisciplinary perspectives, as illustrated by the research index on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, and several important publications over the last several years. Research on Indian languageWikimedia projects and platforms, and on topics related to the sub-continent have also emerged significantly over the last several years.However, as understood in the course of the studies in this compilation as well, awareness about such research within the communities itself remains limited. While there is a lot of important work being undertaken on topics relevant to Indian Wikimedia projects, often by researchers who are Wikimedians themselves, factors such as dissemination beyond academic spaces, and accessibility in terms of language and context seem to also affect their availability to the larger communities, and in terms of implementation of learnings and recommendations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The six short-term research studies undertaken by the Access to Knowledge team over 2019–2021 were therefore initiated as a pilot, an initial foray into the space of research on Wikimedia projects in India. Based on the recommendations of the Wikimedia Foundation, this work was undertaken primarily to tap into new areas of work, while also drawing upon existing expertise at CIS, and in order to build the capacity of the team. With these broader motivations in mind, the research was structured with the following objectives to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Identify knowledge gaps, challenges, and opportunities in different aspects of content creation and participation in Indian language Wikimedia projects.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Develop a better understanding of systemic issues such as gender bias in Indian language communities, access to and reuse of cultural content, open learning in multilingual classrooms, and specific experiences of content creation within Wikimedia communities in India and associated initiatives.</li>
<li>Develop recommendations and best practices towards addressing existing challenges and optimising available resources for the larger free knowledge movement.</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The studies in this compilation therefore examine different aspects of Wikimedia platforms and projects in India, in close alignment with existing work in the programme. These include the gender gap in Indian Wikimedia communities, creating multilingual and open educational platforms and resources, focus on specific projects such as GLAM and Wikidata, and efforts and challenges with content creation, access and outreach in specific language communities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Working on these studies has been a learning experience, especially given the diverse contexts in which the projects are located, and the capacities and interests of the researchers themselves. The design of the studies was also therefore developed and modified to build on existing capacities within the team, and its learnings from previous years of working with various language communities. Capacity-building for team members on research design, methods, fieldwork and documentation was mostly done through close individual supervision and collaborative work. The methods used were largely qualitative, and ranged from interviews, literature reviews, data visualisations, focused group discussions and comparative analyses. The effort was also to try and capture the scale and diversity of the nature of work being undertaken in different Indian language communities through these projects. There were several challenges as well, beginning with framing the research questions and project design in a way that they were accessible to a wider community of people who would be engaged in contributing their inputs towards the work. Process-related challenges, such as translation of interview questionnaires into Indian languages revealed several interesting gaps, such as the lack of technical terms related to digitization or open access in these languages. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 led to restrictions on field visits, thus effectively hampering in person conversations and easier access to community members.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">There have been several learnings in the course of working on these studies, key among them being questions of awareness, relevance and impact. The lack of existing and easily accessible research (including those outside academic work) on several areas of Wikimedia in the Indian context has been a limitation in many ways, offering little in terms of available knowledge and best practices to work with. The limited awareness about, and imagined relevance of research in the regular work of communities has also been an impediment. As illustrated by learnings from a short research needs assessment carried out earlier this year, few community members were aware of research on Wikimedia projects being undertaken in India, and on a global scale. More importantly, there needs to be a conversation on its relevance to their own work, and to the larger movement. An effective communication strategy for research work, in different Indian languages, would perhaps address some of these gaps. A closely related question is also that of impact. The studies in this collection largely focus on short-term impact, through best practices and recommendations that may be developed through the research studies. While this is definitely a pragmatic approach, often the interest in a problem-solution design may look at research purely from an instrumental lens to identify quick solutions and their implementation, without a critical take on exploring and understanding larger, systemic or structural gaps that may be contributing to the problems itself. Going forward, it would be imperative therefore to identify areas of research, and build processes of research design that may address these challenges. Given the dynamic nature of Wikimedia, its platforms and communities, it is important to identify immediate gaps and possible solutions, but also to speak precisely to this aspect of long-term impact and relevance, to both current areas of work and the growth of the larger movement. We hope the studies in this compilation offer some insights towards these, and many more interesting questions related to research on Wikimedia and the free knowledge movement in India.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-studies-on-indian-language-wikimedia-projects'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-studies-on-indian-language-wikimedia-projects</a>
</p>
No publishersnehaCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K Research2022-10-21T12:59:55ZBlog EntryOpen Movement in India (2013-23): The Idea and Its Expressions
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-movement-in-india-idea-and-its-expressions
<b>This report identifies some broad patterns that have materialized in the Open Movement in the country in the last decade. The report is based on a reading of the available literature on selected projects and conversations with academicians and advocates of the Open. The rough outline of the Open initiatives is accompanied by reflections on the nature of the Open here and the need to envision it differently from what it currently is.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The report was prepared by Soni Wadhwa, and the visual elements of this study have been sourced by Joseph Francis. CIS’s Access to Knowledge team is grateful to Soni for embarking on the study and making the recommendations. The full report can be read <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/files/open-movement-india.pdf">here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Open, as an idea, has not received systematic attention in India. Openness as a philosophy is rooted in the belief that sharing ideas and resources is healthy for the knowledge economy, especially in contemporary times. This sharing does not take anything away from any entity; rather, it enables collaboration and innovation for the larger social good. With the Internet and digital technology, one can see the faster spread of such innovation across the globe while also allowing for plenty of room for its adaptation to regional contexts. Anchored in the thought and efforts of individuals such as Richard Stallman (1992; 2002; 2006; 2009) and Tim Berners-Lee (Berners Lee, 2004; Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila, 2001; Berners-Lee et al 1992; Berners-Lee and Tim, 2010; Berners-Lee, Tim and Hendler, 2001; Berners-Lee, Tim and Shadbollt, 2011; Bizer, Heath and Berners-Lee 2011) who take a view contrary to that of keeping public funded research and innovation locked away under copyright and patent laws, the Open Movement originated in the Global North.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In the West, specifically in the USA, with the support from the institutions such as the Hewlett Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the manifestation of the Open Movement through the push for OER (Open Educational Resources) translated into a greater uptake from educational institutions such as Rice University and the MIT (through MIT OCW – Open CourseWare)(Bliss and Smith, 2017). With prestigious universities offering MOOCs (massive open online courses) through platforms such as edX and Coursera, educational resources have come to be seen as a social good: keeping them available for mass access has been an intentional move towards equal access to quality educational materials. In addition to OER, Open Access (the idea that research funded by public funds need to be made available publicly rather than behind a paywall erected by commercial publishers), as an expression of the Open Movement, has also been present in institutional funding mechanisms in the West, again, especially in the USA. A lot of research emerging out of grants extended to individuals and institutions have space for allocation of funds towards the cost of Open Access publishing for dissemination of results. Several other initiatives such as the Creative Commons, and the Wikimedia Foundation have been working towards making Openness a reality by charting out various projects, pathways, and initiatives to keep knowledge accessible to all for learning as well as collaboration.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In India, the state of the Open Movement is thrown into stark relief by the much longer and much more engaged Western imagination and practice of Openness. Indeed, studying its contours here is equivalent to studying its absences and is therefore very challenging. Here, Open, as an idea, has come via the West and still seems to be struggling to be defined and accepted as an ideal to strive towards. It is an alien concept, deeply misunderstood by the stakeholders who control sharing of knowledge resources: policy makers, legislators, leaders of research and institutions, and researchers and academicians in general.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To suggest another example, a pilot survey of Indian faculty members’ attitudes towards use of Open Knowledge sources such as Wikipedia in Indian classrooms reveals that faculty members are very suspicious and skeptical of such sources. They see it as a source of misinformation and therefore, as unreliable.What gets missed is the idea that the content on these sources is not merely for consumption of information and knowledge but are also platforms for knowledge creation and collaboration. In contrast to the two scenarios of OER and Open Access mentioned above, India does not show a long history of organized effort towards making information and knowledge accessible to all, not just through earmarking funds or mechanisms for making publicly funded research available in the public domain via Open Access, but through nurturing a culture of the Open as the default mode of dissemination.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What, then, are we to make of the direction in which the Open Movement is headed in India? Is it possible to shape its trajectory in India? Is it possible to ascertain the ways in which the ideas or benefits of the Open can be made to resonate with the Indian educational and research scenario? Can Indian educators and researchers afford to stay out of the Open ecosystem? What alternative modes of innovation do they champion? These are the questions that this study of the Open Movement in India in the last decade (2013-2023) seeks to explore.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The study is not an exhaustive one: it looks at only some examples that engage with the idea of the Open. The selective nature of the study is informed by two rationales. One, an all-encompassing review would be impossible given the constraints on time and resources: indeed, such a review would be the task of a full-fledged tracking project (which is one of the futures that this report suggests at the end). Two, given that Open does not have a clear pathway or a central, strategic vision to drive it as a movement, the selection of projects themselves is a symptom of the disjointed ways in which the idea of Open struggles to take shape or survive in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The year 2013 has been chosen as a starting point for this exploration because it was the year the Wikimedia Foundation extended a grant to the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, to work with various Wikipedia communities in India towards the growth of the Open ecosystem in India. This last decade then is of grave importance to the CIS because it helps the organization reflect on their own work vis-a-vis that of other Open advocates CIS’s work, since then, is available on its website through details of its initiatives via its Access to Knowledge and Openness Programmes (see, for instance, their work on <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/bridging-the-gender-gap-in-indian-language-wikimedia-communities">bridging gender gap</a> on Indian Wikimedia communities, apart from a host of other training and advocacy initiatives <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/cis-a2k">here</a>). This study is an aid to survey the idea and expressions of the Open as a broader movement and thus help CIS reflect on new directions and strategies to be pursued in the near future, to begin with.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, there is more to the year 2013 than the happenstance of the grant to CIS per se: indeed, one can spot other organized efforts emerging in the Indian ecosystem since then. NPTEL (National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning), which was established in 2003, began to offer MOOCs on its platform in 2014. Coincidentally, 2013 was also the year the Bichitra Project (an online variorum of the work of the Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore), funded by the Ministry of Culture, went live. Together, the international foray into the Indian Open Movement and the governmental gravitas to strive towards making education and the literature of a great Indian author) accessible provide the rationale for this study’s focus on the examination of the nature of championing for the cause of the Open, its successes, failures, and potential for its growth in the next decade.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The approach or methodology to explore answers to these questions involved: analysis of primary as well as secondary research available on the different initiatives in India; interactions with experts working in the Open domain in India including some Indian academicians, especially on the discussion of Open Access which impacts their publishing record, and in turn, impacts their career advancement. The reading and the conversations supplemented each other in the process of investigation: the existing literature provided facts through texts (blogs, papers, documentation on websites and so on) while the interactions opened up more nuances of intersections through perspectives that do not always make it to the static texts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Any study on the Open Movement in India owes a huge debt to Arul George Scaria’s gargantuan <a href="https://osf.io/m3q4s">Open Science India Report (2019)</a>. At over 350 pages, it is a detailed study of Open Access projects and also includes a survey conducted among academic fraternity. It also offers concrete suggestions to strengthen access in research. It is remarkable for the larger view it takes of access to include access for persons with disabilities and access in terms of language, suggesting that research should also be accessible in Indian languages, and also in jargon-free English for wider audiences. Apart from Scaria’s study, there are journalistic pieces about Open Data in India, given the relevance it has for governance.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This current study does not aspire to be monumental like Scaria’s. However, it is hoped that its relevance to the ongoing conversations about openness would be noted at at least two levels. One, between 2019 (when Scaria’s report was published) and 2023 (the end point of this study), socioeconomic changes such as COVID-19 and the resulting remote work, one expects, have highlighted the significance of openness. For instance, given the serious constraints it posed for travel, a lot of commercial publishers kept their resources open so that further research, within medicine and outside, could keep happening. Thus, it becomes imperative to understand if the Indian ecosystem displayed any stronger endeavor towards openness. To anticipate a couple of suggestions discussed in the report below, certain things such as Indian researchers’ apathy or disdain for Open Access has not quite changed in the span of these four years. However, Government of India’s open initiatives such as Anuvadini and Bhashini around tools for navigating and producing content in Indian languages have started to appear.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Two, Scaria’s study subsumed all knowledge under “science”: in other words, science, in his report, is a metonym for knowledge. This current study, in being inclusive of humanities and the arts, especially as relevant to Open GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums), engages with knowledge or movement in general irrespective of its disciplinary boundaries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With that statement on where this report is situated, some notes about its structure are in order. This study begins with an overview of the legal and policy environment in India. It then moves on to explore the nature of Open projects in India. There are many ways to organize the narrative around Openness, with the domain wise bifurcation of the different aspects of the Open (The OPEN Movements, 2023). In contrast, this goes on to organize the projects around positionalities, rather than the domains. That is, the different projects and initiatives are narrativised as:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Public funded projects: These are endeavors emerging from funds provided by the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Culture and distributed via grants to Higher Education Institutes in India, especially the IITs. They stand out as one category in that they are characterized by:</p>
<ol> </ol>
<ul>
<li>The vision to provide basic infrastructure of education and archival material in the public domain</li>
<li>The capacity to think and execute in terms of massive impact and scale</li>
<li>A wide scope for aiming higher in terms of innovation, approach, and access</li>
</ul>
<p>Volunteer undertakings: These are projects undertaken by non governmental organizations such as the Sanchaya Foundation, SFLC (Software Freedom Law Centre) and FOSSUnited characterized by:</p>
<ol> </ol>
<ul>
<li>A niche focus on a language or a domain or an audience </li>
<li>A preoccupation with developing a community rather than delivering an output</li>
<li>A qualitative aspect to engagement and documentation, as opposed to impact in terms of numbers</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Within volunteer undertakings, the role of philanthropic foundations is very briefly touched upon. There are entities such as the SRTT (Sir Ratan Tata Trust) and SDTT (Sir Dorabji Tata Trust) that supported the cause of the Open in the initial stages via their investment in the larger educational and cultural cause. These foundations also seem to have discontinued their efforts in the long term perhaps given the scope of work involved. In addition to philanthropic foundations, mention is also made of international projects. The international Open Knowledge projects in India involve the Wikimedia Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation that have funded various initiatives in India and have continued to stay invested in the larger vision as well as execution of Openness through their grants.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The discussion of the above mentioned types of projects is followed by an examination of the attitudes of academicians teaching at Higher Education Institutes towards Open Access as a specific niche within the Open Movement. Conversation with faculty members in different institutions reveals that Open as an idea is not quite clear to the academia, or at least occupies a space of dissonance: while it is desired as an ideal, it is very strongly constrained by the judgments of fellow peers and employing institutions. In contrast, conversations with experts in Open Access reveals that Open Access deserves a much stronger effort: not just to push for policy changes but also to decolonize Indian academia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The study concludes with some threads that can be pursued from the projects the Open Movement in India has witnessed in the last decade. These points of engagement could become points of reflection for further initiatives in the next decade or two.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-movement-in-india-idea-and-its-expressions'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-movement-in-india-idea-and-its-expressions</a>
</p>
No publishersoniCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpenness2024-02-13T02:57:29ZBlog EntryMapping GLAM in Maharashtra
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mapping-glam-in-maharashtra
<b>This is a short study on mapping the digital transition in selected Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) institutions in Maharashtra, India, and exploring possibilities and challenges for collaborations with Wikimedia projects. Research was undertaken by Aaryaa Joshi, Dnyanada Gadre-Phadke, Kalyani Kotkar and Subodh Kulkarni; the report has been authored by Subodh Kulkarni with editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and external review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019–2020. </b>
<h2 dir="ltr">Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The digital turn has been an important development for the cultural heritage sector in India, especially in the last decade, where access to internet and multimedia technologies has led to several advancements in the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) space. This has also encouraged a multiplicity of uses of cultural content in diverse contexts. Several efforts have been undertaken in this space over the last decade, including state initiatives like the <a class="external-link" href="http://museumsofindia.gov.in/repository/">National Museum Collections digital repository</a>, archival efforts at universities such as <a href="http://www.jaduniv.edu.in/">Jadavpur University</a> and private and individual initiatives such as the <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/">People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI)</a> and <a href="https://indiancine.ma/">Indiancine.ma</a>. Apart from developments in preservation, curation and content sharing there remain continued concerns related to access, infrastructure and linguistic barriers in this sector. Intellectual property rights, open access and privacy issues have also emerged as important issues for cultural institutions looking to open up their collections to a wider public.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Collaboration with open knowledge production spaces like <a href="https://wikimediafoundation.org/">Wikimedia</a> and <a href="https://openglam.org/">OpenGLAM</a> then offer important insights into possibilities now available with the digital turn for better public access to cultural content, but also in terms of the development of collaborative archival efforts. Efforts such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM">GLAM-Wiki</a> have been crucial in bridging the gap between cultural institutions and initiatives in the free knowledge movement. There is still however lack of documentation and research on the various kinds of existing collections and archival efforts afoot in India, and how they may benefit from better access through platforms like Wikimedia. This study maps a few of such GLAM institutions in Maharashtra, India, and reviews their collections, challenges and limitations to explore possibilities for better collaboration between cultural and public memory institutions through GLAM-Wiki initiatives.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Research Questions and Method</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The study was framed by the following questions:</p>
<ul><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">How has the digital transition in the GLAM sector in Maharashtra, India, impacted the process of creation and access to cultural content?</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">What are possible collaborations with open knowledge efforts like GLAM-Wiki?</p>
</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The mapping of GLAM institutions was undertaken through questionnaires/surveys conducted with six GLAM institutions working in Pune district and one in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra state. The institutions were identified through existing networks established by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Subodh_(CIS-A2K)">Subodh Kulkarni</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K">CIS-A2K</a> Programme Officer associated with Wikimedia projects working in this area and snowball sampling. The questionnaires were focused on the nature, objective and scope of the collections, funding, provenance, offline and online workflows (including acquiring, preservation, accessioning, digitisation and metadata standards), human resources, infrastructure, IPR policies and public outreach efforts. The questionnaires were administered with the help of the Programme Officer and volunteers working in this language community. The questionnaire with Marathi translation is given in <a href="https://cis-india.org/GLAM-Mapping-Report-A2K" class="external-link">Annexure I.</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The mapping helped to produce a set of recommendations for possible GLAM-Wiki collaborations in the Indian context. This was done through field visits to these institutions, review of the material, and interviews with key resource persons (administrators, faculty and students, archivists, librarians, developers etc.) who manage the collections of cultural content.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The following seven GLAM institutions were visited during the period November 2019 to February 2020. Further visits were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation. Three Wikimedians — <a href="https://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%E0%A4%9C%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%9E%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%BE_%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%87-%E0%A4%AB%E0%A4%A1%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%87">User:ज्ञानदा गद्रे-फडके</a>, <a href="https://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%E0%A4%86%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE_%E0%A4%9C%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5%80">User:आर्या जोशी</a> & <a href="https://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B0">User:कल्याणी कोतकर</a> uploaded images of these collections on <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:GLAM_Mapping_in_Maharashtra">Wikimedia Commons</a>, and added/expanded five related articles on Marathi Wikipedia — <a href="https://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%BE_%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B0_%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B3%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B0_%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%B9%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B2%E0%A4%AF">राजा दिनकर केळकर संग्रहालय</a>, <a href="https://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AA%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%87_%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%B0_%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%9A%E0%A4%A8_%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B0">पुणे नगर वाचन मंदिर</a>, <a href="https://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%95_%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%9A%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B2%E0%A4%AF,_%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%B0">सार्वजनिक वाचनालय, राजगुरुनगर</a>, and <a href="https://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%86%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%9F%E0%A5%87_%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%9A%E0%A4%A8_%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B0">आपटे वाचन मंदिर</a>. </p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Observations about Research Method</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The study was done with the help of three active Wikimedians, Aaryaa Joshi (Username:आर्या जोशी), Dnyanada Gadre-Phadke (Username:ज्ञानदा गद्रे-फडके) & Kalyani Kotkar (Username:कल्याणी कोतकर) interested in GLAM related activities. The questionnaire was developed with their participation. Orientation sessions were conducted to discuss the research design, process and outputs. The potential areas for bringing content into various Wikimedia projects were explained. While these Wikimedians conducted the visits for this mapping voluntarily, the actual expenses on travel, refreshments etc. were reimbursed. These volunteers had to carve out time slots from their regular jobs to complete the task. The timings at institutions and availability of key persons also needed to be considered while planning the visits. Sometimes the volunteers had to take leave from their regular work, which also led to some difficulties.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The first visit was to establish an association with the institution and the persons. The meeting with the authorities at the institution was essential to get the consent forms signed and complete other such formalities, including permissions to conduct interviews. This process delayed the work slightly, but is an important learning in terms of the need to establish a rapport with institutions for such research. The questionnaire was translated into Marathi (the local language) to facilitate the discussions. It was felt that to cover the basic aspects of the collections at an institution, at least 4–5 visits are required with a little gap between visits. This regular frequency will help to build relationships as well as maintain the work flow. The sample size for the present study was small due to some unforeseen constraints such as getting enough number of interested volunteer Wikimedians to undertake some of the research, multiple visits required for each institution which extended the duration of fieldwork, lack of positive responses from the GLAM institutions as well as eventual restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Survey of GLAM in Maharashtra</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">To identify the major institutions in Maharashtra and prepare the list of major GLAM institutions in the state, various government and private official websites as well as publications were studied. It was realised that no website or publication has created a comprehensive district or statewide list of institutions. Information about a few institutions is available online, but these are helpful largely from a tourism point of view. There is no proper selection or thematic categorisation which considers researchers, students, or other communities of interest. The popular tourist routes are given importance. Therefore, there is a need to document all the GLAMs category-wise on platforms freely accessible to the public. Some of the websites are listed in <a href="https://cis-india.org/GLAM%20Mapping%20Report%20A2K" class="external-link">Annexure II</a><a href="https://cis-india.org/GLAM%20Mapping%20Report%20A2K" class="external-link">.</a></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Description of Surveyed Institutions</h2>
<div> <strong style="text-align: justify;">Apte Vachan Mandir, Ichalkaranji</strong></div>
<div> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/Art_gallery_at_Apte_vachan_mandir_Ichalkaranji.jpg/image_preview" title="Art_gallery_at_Apte_vachan_mandir,_Ichalkaranji" align="middle" height="300" width="550" alt="Art_gallery_at_Apte_vachan_mandir,_Ichalkaranji" /></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;"> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;"> <em> Art Gallery at Apte Vachan Mandir, Ichalkaranji. By <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:%E0%A4%9C%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%9E%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%BE_%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%87-%E0%A4%AB%E0%A4%A1%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%87">ज्ञानदा गद्रे-फडके</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Art_gallery_at_Apte_vachan_mandir,_Ichalkaranji.jpg">Art gallery at Apte vachan mandir, Ichalkaranji</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode">CC BY-SA 4.0</a></em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;"> </div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.aptewachan.org/">Apte Vachan Mandir</a> is a 150 year old library in a small city named Ichalkaranji in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra. The authorities are very cooperative and eager to start digitization of the old/rare books and art gallery. They also need help regarding digitisation and preservation of the century old paintings. The institute is ready to scan the books if equipment and training is provided to their staff. The officials have given the list of 400+ rare books which they are planning to digitise. The official communication has started with the secretary of the institution. The further process stalled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p><strong style="text-align: justify;">Iravati Karve Anthropological Museum, Pune</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.unipune.ac.in/dept/mental_moral_and_social_science/anthropology/antropology_webfiles/Musium.htm">Iravati Karve Anthropological Museum</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> is located in the Savitribai Phule Pune University campus, Pune. The initial visit was conducted and permission was sought for further documentation. The curator and authorities have extended all possible cooperation regarding open knowledge access to the museum collections urther visits could not be undertaken due to the restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.</span></p>
<div><span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Joshi’s Museum of Miniature Railways</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.minirailways.com/">Joshi’s Museum of Miniature Railways</a> was founded in 1998 by B. S. Joshi in Pune city. It houses different models of trains, railway stations, tracks with signals, bridges, streets in the cities, circus etc. Light and sound shows are also arranged here. This is a unique collection in India. One can get an experience of scientific concepts, handicraft, technology, history, amusement related artifacts at one place. The authorities of this museum do not feel the need of digitization as it is a live show which gives the best experience. However the documentation of the development process regarding railway models present in the museum is important. They wish to increase the outreach through publicity of the museum on free knowledge platforms to attract visitors to increase the footfall. As it is a privately owned museum, it is getting difficult to maintain it or add new things to it. So, there is scope for some kind of engagement with this museum.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Museum in College of Military Engineering, Pune</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage/CME-Museum/">College of Military Engineering</a> is a premier institute for army training in India established in 1943. The museum houses vintage engineering equipment from the pre-World War I era, which is displayed over a large landscape. The archives of the corps are also maintained in the library section. Permission for an initial visit was received late due to administrative procedures. Further visits for interviews with the key officials were planned but cancelled due to the lockdown following the COVID-19 pandemic. But there is scope to document the rare machinery, engineering structures, military vehicles etc. as it is openly accessible to the public. The institute is also keen to spread this knowledge to young generations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><strong><img src="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copy_of______4.jpg/image_preview" title="Pune nagar vachan" height="300" width="550" alt="Pune nagar vachan" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-ce138273-7fff-3e8c-3337-8f071744d5e6"><em>Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir Library. By <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%95_%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B0">दिपक कोतकर</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E0%A4%AA%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%87%20%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%B0%20%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%9A%E0%A4%A8%20%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B0%20%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A5%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B2%E0%A4%AF%204.jpg">पुणे नगर वाचन मंदिर ग्रंथालय 4</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode">CC BY-SA 4.0</a></em></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.punenagarvachan.org/">Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir</a> is a historic library in Pune founded in 1848. The library houses a rich collection with rare books in various languages from the 17th century. It also possesses historical manuscripts and valuable diaries. The library management is very up to date on new developments in the field and has already adopted web technologies for catering to members. The catalogues are made available online in <a href="https://koha-community.org/">Koha</a>. They have started digitisation efforts to some extent but need inputs and support. The authorities are eager to collaborate on larger projects to make their resources freely available. The authorities are ready to give the database of books for further integration with Wikimedia projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong id="docs-internal-guid-313b0f93-7fff-7fc2-0133-57e2a7f9c8df">Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><a href="http://rajakelkarmuseum.org/about.html">Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum</a> was founded in 1920 by Dinkar Kelkar in Pune city. This museum houses 22,000 rare artifacts from different historical times. The thematic galleries have been developed thoughtfully. The museum has published 8 catalogues on these themes. More details of this museum can be seen on the official website.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><img src="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copy_of__.jpg/image_preview" title="Mastani mahal" height="300" width="550" alt="Mastani mahal" class="image-inline image-inline" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c7c43d70-7fff-a710-c0ff-28420cb2098f"><em>Mastani Mahal restored at Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum,Pune. By <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:%E0%A4%86%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE_%E0%A4%9C%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5%80">आर्या जोशी</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%80%20%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%B9%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B2.jpg">मस्तानी महाल</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode">CC BY-SA 4.0</a></em></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-89a616fd-7fff-dc9d-d9c3-37b139766c1d"></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">This museum is partially funded by the State Government for some regular maintenance. The funds for development, upgradation, conservation and promotion are to be raised by the institution. A digitisation project has been planned by the museum authorities, and it is progressing as the resources are being arranged. The museum officials are open to share information digitally in the public domain. They believe that they can reach interested masses through Wikimedia Projects. They have given permission to photograph the objects and the various conservation practices in their laboratory. They have expressed their readiness to give free access to libraries and museums for Wikimedians visiting the institution for purposes of research.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Rajgurunagar Public Library, Rajgurunagar</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Rajgurunagar Public Library is a 150 plus year old Public access library with a competitive examination center. The special features are rare books from the 19th century and manuscripts. The management was not aware of Wikimedia projects, Open source cataloging, Unicode data entry systems etc. But after the visit, the officials responded very positively to start digitisation of 25 rare books in collaboration with the Access to Knowledge programme, Centre for Internet and Society and <a href="http://vigyanashram.com/">Vigyan Ashram, Pabal</a>. The task was completed and these books were digitised and uploaded on Wikimedia Commons by creating a <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_with_Public_Library,_Rajgurunagar_published_before_1900">separate category</a>. As the manuscripts and other material is getting degenerated, this collection needs to be digitised at the earliest.</p>
<h2>Observations</h2>
<p> <strong style="text-align: justify;">Target audience</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The GLAM institutions, especially museums and libraries are facing a decrease in footfall in recent times. The officials feel that uploading material on the web under free licenses will further aid this trend. At the same time they also express their interest and ideas to attract a new generation to engage with these collections through promotional mobile apps. There are however persistent anxieties about public access to these materials on the web. Some institutions possess unique or rare material such as antiquities, manuscripts, live models or books. The officials fear that the institutions will lose their points of attraction if they are projected on the web with descriptions. On the other hand, the researchers and interested communities are unaware of such treasures with these institutions. </p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Sustainability</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Sustenance of the institutions is another important point and obstacle in digitisation of collections. The publications of the museums are a source of revenue for them. As the entry fees or subscription charges need to be kept minimal for the visitors, the priced material sold at the counters is the only income source for these institutions. Hence, there is a limitation of online availability and promotion of this material. Finding a sustainable model which also allows for open access to content is a difficult task for a large number of organisations. The financial support to these institutions is not a priority area for Government agencies or philanthropic organisations. Some institutions have successfully attempted for corporate social responsibility (CSR) funding. They need professional inputs for fundraising campaigns.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Technical challenges</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">There are also technical challenges with the digitisation process itself. Some of the libraries have not adopted a universal cataloging system. Therefore it is difficult to analyse the data of books according to copyright status and physical conditions. The authorities are eager to dispose of decaying material after digitisation. Some of them have approached State Government departments for funds but got no response. This may be because standard digitisation policies are not in place at a national level, and a lot of institutions are unaware of existing benchmarks and policies. Another hindrance is that the books will not be permitted to be taken outside the institution for scanning because of the physical condition. Awareness and training in archival and records management is a key requirement in these conditions. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Capacity building</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The awareness and capacity building of the personnel at the institutions in the area of free knowledge and digitisation skills is to be enhanced before starting any project. The terminologies and case studies of some projects in local languages are necessary for better understanding of concepts as well as best practices. Some of the good archive projects in Marathi completed by various organisations include digitisation of the complete works of <a href="http://www.vinoba.in/#/books">Vinoba Bhave</a>, <a href="http://prabodhankar.org/samagra-sahitya">Prabodhankar Thakeray</a> and <a href="https://www.savarkarsmarak.com/downloadbooks.php">Vinayak Savarkar</a>. The language department of the State Government of Maharashtra has also digitised and uploaded 129 old books and 555 old magazines on their <a href="https://rmvs.marathi.gov.in/books">website</a>. The other <a href="https://sahitya.marathi.gov.in/%E0%A4%87-%E0%A4%AC%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%95-%E0%A4%A1%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%8A%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%A1">website of the literature & culture department</a> has made available 434 books in PDF, epub and mobi format.</p>
<br />
<h2>Recommendations</h2>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">These recommendations are based on the interactions with the Wikimedians involved in the process, the interviews with key persons from seven GLAM institutions and previous experiences of working with such institutions. The important learnings from this research study are captured in the observations stated above. As the focus of the discussions remained limited to the access to cultural content and possible collaborations regarding Wikimedia Projects, the content creation aspect was not touched upon in detail. The recommendations emerging from this study provide some guidelines for action points for the near future. However, for designing broader strategies for the GLAM sector, a sizable number of institutions in different regions of the state need to be mapped to provide a more comprehensive picture of the sector and its possibilities </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The recommendations regarding various stakeholders in the mapping process are stipulated below -</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>For Wikimedians</strong></p>
<ul><li>Orientation sessions for Wikimedians visiting the institute regarding GLAM related Wikimedia projects, copyright issues, Creative commons licenses and basics of library science should be conducted. The availability of resource material on these topics in local languages will be useful in the interview process.</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">For replicating this mapping activity across one state or several states, the selection of Wikimedia volunteers is crucial. The provision for reasonable honorarium per visit should be made for time bound as well as qualitative execution of tasks.</p>
</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>For GLAM institutions</strong></p>
<ul><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">It was observed that the GLAM institutions are not well aware about the free knowledge platforms like <a href="https://wikimediafoundation.org/our-work/wikimedia-projects/">Wikimedia projects</a> or <a href="https://archive.org/">Internet archive</a>. They are aware about copyright and intellectual property rights, but not about <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons</a> or other licenses available. They wish to make their resources available across the world but are not clear about the methods. The collaboration regarding these aspects is highly appreciated.</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Old libraries have a good collection of rare old books. They are finding difficulties in preservation of books as well as facing space constraints. Also for these books, readership is also negligible. Hence there is a need to digitise this valuable reference material before it degenerates.</p>
</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>For CIS (or other implementing agency)</strong></p>
<ul><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">A comprehensive list of GLAM institutions in the state, with further categorisation into geographical & thematic aspects is to be developed and be made freely accessible for the public at large. </p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Training in universal metadata structures and unicode systems like Koha is to be arranged for the staff and management members at these institutions. At least the cataloging in universal format should be done on priority to analyse the metadata for copyright free status. A central repository is needed to avoid duplication in scanning. CIS-A2K needs to design strategic plan for this activity.</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">For in-depth case studies of potential GLAM-Wiki institutions, <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedian_in_residence">Wikimedian in Residence (WiR)</a> programme should be adopted.</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Interactions with concerned State and Central Government departments would facilitate the research activity and further collaborations. The findings of the research could be shared with such agencies along with concrete project proposals designed in collaboration with concerned institutions.</p>
</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> As illustrated by the observations of this study, the digital turn has brought about significant changes in the cultural heritage sector, but a large part of these still pertain to concerns around access to cultural content. The role of digital technologies and free knowledge platforms like Wikipedia in addressing these issues of access and outreach, and importantly in content creation therefore remains to be explored, through a more comprehensive study of the sector. Further, the study has also been indicative of the potential of collaborative work, and efforts needed towards the same, which may be helpful in also contributing towards a broader strategy for GLAM work with Wikimedia projects in Indian languages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Mapping_GLAM_in_Maharashtra,_India">here</a>.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mapping-glam-in-maharashtra'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mapping-glam-in-maharashtra</a>
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No publisherSubodh KulkarniA2K ResearchAccess to Knowledge2021-05-15T12:30:59ZBlog EntryMapping Content on Gender and Sexuality in Indian Languages
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-mapping-content-on-gender-and-sexuality-in-indian-languages
<b>This research study explores content production processes on gender and sexuality in Indian languages, its digital documentation and factors that affect its availability and use on open access platforms. The research was undertaken by Yashashwini Srinivas, with editorial inputs by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Torsha Sarkar. This research was part of short-term studies undertaken at the CIS-A2K programme 2021-22.</b>
<p>Read the report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Mapping_Content_on_Gender_and_Sexuality_in_Indian_Languages">here</a>.</p>
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<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Mapping Content on Gender and Sexuality in Indian languages is a research project that studies the content production process on gender and sexuality in Indian languages and challenges it with its digital documentation. It examines the diverse nature of content creation on these topics, processes of its digitalisation and related challenges that contribute to the disparity in its availability and use on open knowledge platforms such as Wikimedia projects, and potential strategies to address the same.<br /><br />Through conversations with individuals and institutions working on gender, sexuality and allied topics like feminism, with a focus on women, non-binary and LGBTQIA+ related content, the study explores various aspects of content creation across multiple Indian languages, its access and use. Based on analysing this data and drawing on ongoing work within the mainstream discourse on gender and sexuality, the report offers a set of observations on ways to address challenges related to the gender gap in the content creation process on open knowledge platforms.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Context and Methods</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Collaborative knowledge production platforms such as Wikimedia projects have recognised the existence of a <a title="Gender gap" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_gap">gender gap and bias</a> across its projects, understood largely as disparities in participation by and content related to women and, by extension, individuals across diverse gender and sexual identities. As observed in global literature as well as by work done by Indian language communities (with a focus largely on women Wikimedians), the gap is a result of various infrastructural and socio-cultural factors, including limited access to devices and the internet; balancing professional, domestic and volunteer work; lack of technical capacity-building and communication skills; limited presence in leadership positions, and the need for safe and healthy working environments among others. Several efforts have been made globally and in Indian language communities to address these challenges.<br /><br />The issue of the gender gap, or indeed the challenges identified, are not unique to Wikimedia projects alone but are reflective of gender disparities in the public sphere and across the internet more broadly. Key learning from previous work in this space has been the need to connect these conversations and efforts to bridge the gender gap with the wider public discourse related to content creation on gender and sexuality online and in Indian languages. This study aimed to map such content with perspectives drawn from diverse gender and sexual identities. Importantly, it sought to understand better some of the infrastructural and cultural factors that shape creating such content and making it publicly available in diverse languages.<br /><br />This study was done across four Indian languages - Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu (while English remained inevitable), focusing on content under two sub-themes– a. Cultural History and b. Feminist Production/Publication. The respondents in the study included organisations and individuals working in the areas of gender, sexuality and allied areas like feminist interventions and publishing, with a focus on writers, translators, artists, and multi-format content creators and curators. The study adopted a qualitative approach and comprised 19 semi-structured interviews (including four focused group discussions with organisations). Owing to the pandemic, all interactions for this study were done through telephonic conversation, email and virtual conferencing. These interactions have helped us understand the process of content creation in these areas. These problems manifest as gendered disparities in engagement with online platforms and potential solutions to address the same.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Key Research Areas</h2>
<p>The three major thematic areas this research study focused on are as follows.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Nature of the Knowledge Produced</strong><br />Content production on gender and sexuality in Indian languages spans several areas, including education, activism, advocacy and rights and justice, to name a few, given the location of much early writing in this space within the women’s rights and several other social movements in India. Important observations on the nature of this content by respondents include the emergence of a feminist critique across fields and disciplines, active interventions in the public discourse around gender and sexuality and the need for an intersectional approach to the process of content production. The growth of content in Indian languages and their increased availability on online platforms is also an important step towards addressing the predominance of Anglocentric and academic perspectives in these areas of research and work.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Digital Spaces, and movement of Content from Paper to Pixel</strong><br />The cohort of the participants of this study has pointed out the evolution of the internet and digital tools from a luxury to a necessity but also acknowledged the widespread disparity in their access and use. However, the interesting outcome of this has been the transformation of traditional publishing methods and the emergence of cost-efficient space to produce content in various formats (like on social media) which fosters wider dissemination and engagement. However, increasing digital content production also comes with the need for advancements in digital literacy, resources and infrastructure. Digitalisation and open access to content on gender and sexuality in Indian languages is, therefore, a resource-intensive process, with related challenges such as copyright restrictions and technical limitations to access and use of Indian language content etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Indian Languages</strong><br />The content creation process on gender and sexuality in Indian languages is complex given the country's diversity. Still, socio-cultural factors continue to determine the growth and use of languages, often resulting from asymmetries of power amongst diverse communities. This includes the marginalisation of certain forms of language use and content production processes that are not seen as within the ambit of dominant languages. Further, the lack of a gender-neutral vocabulary across many Indian languages and the significant challenges in the translation are important issues that emerged in this space. While the translation of content on gender and sexuality into Indian languages from English and other foreign languages is challenging due to the lack of a gender-neutral and conceptual vocabulary, as noted earlier; the lack of reverse translations and limitations within publishing and wider circulation of content are some of the factors that continue to affect work in this space.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Learnings</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The learnings from this study outline the many challenges in content production on gender and sexuality, especially in Indian languages and its availability in digital spaces. These include the need to recognise that gendered disparities result from asymmetries of power, thus calling for a more critical outlook and intersectional approach towards the processes of content production (and related work such as translation, digitisation and archiving). They also offer several strategies and best practices drawn from observations by the respondents to address some of these gaps in content creation and circulation to ensure sustainable knowledge production ecosystems.<br /><br />These include the dire need to bridge technical and infrastructural gaps, facilitate visibility and engagement with content through collaborations with key institutions and individuals in this space, and capacity-building through developing pedagogy and tools. Further, there is a need to diversify the approach towards creating and sourcing content and creating safe working environments by developing redressal mechanisms for marginalised and vulnerable communities. As Wikimedia projects constitute a major part of the digital knowledge ecosystem and have been working towards more diversity and inclusion across their projects, a sustained approach to bridge these gaps may be adopted in the Indian context. This would contribute immensely to efforts to bridge the gender gap across Wikimedia projects and in the larger digital public sphere.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-mapping-content-on-gender-and-sexuality-in-indian-languages'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-mapping-content-on-gender-and-sexuality-in-indian-languages</a>
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No publisherYashashwini SrinivasCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen Content2022-10-21T13:03:20ZBlog EntryInfrastructural Needs of Indian Language Wikisource Projects
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-infrastructural-needs-of-indian-language-wikisource-projects
<b>This is a short study on identifying the infrastructural gaps on Indian language Wikisource projects, and potential strategies to address the same. The study was undertaken by Jayantha Nath, Puthiya Purayil Sneha and Satdeep Gill, with writing and editorial oversight by Puthiya Purayil Sneha and an external review by Divyank Katira. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2021-22.</b>
<p>Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Infrastructural_Needs_of_Indian_Language_Wikisource_Projects"><strong>here</strong></a>.</p>
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<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This research project is an effort to understand some of the infrastructural needs of Wikisource platforms in India. With a focus on technological capacity, resources and training, this short pilot study collected baseline data from <a title="Indic Wikisource Community" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Indic_Wikisource_Community">Indian language Wikisource communities</a> to identify key knowledge gaps and areas of improvement. The final report here offers an overview of the current challenges in this space, and some learnings and recommendations on potential strategies to address these gaps, including through collaborative intervention and training.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Context</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a title="Wikisource" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource">Wikisource</a> projects have been an important part of the open knowledge movement in India, as it is a hub of out of copyright and freely licensed texts in a number of languages from across the world. With a focus on creating a ‘growing free content online library of source texts, as well as translations of source texts in any language', it functions as an important open knowledge repository that supports content development on various sister projects such as <a title="Wikipedia" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia">Wikipedia</a>, <a title="Wikiquote" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiquote">Wikiquote</a> etc. <a title="Wikisource" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource">Wikisource</a> projects in Indian languages have seen tremendous growth, especially over the last decade with increased efforts in content donation under free licences, digitization initiatives and availability of source texts. There have also been several advancements in Indic language computing and availability of digital infrastructure, such as more Indian language fonts, many with Unicode support, and increased flexibility in working with texts due to <a title="en:Optical character recognition" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition">Optical Character Recognition (OCR)</a> technologies. There has also been a general growth in awareness about the need for sourcing and making available more content in Indian languages, and better access to platforms like Wikisource has aided these efforts to a great extent.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However, several Indian language communities also continue to grapple with persistent challenges in this space, across diverse Wikimedia projects. Similarly, with Wikisource, there have been concerns about a lack of active participation and efforts towards bringing more content on the platform, including translations, and encouraging the use of source texts across projects among others. While a majority of the contributors are comfortable with <a title="wikisource:Help:Transclusion" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:Transclusion">transcribing texts</a>, more technical tasks such as importing new books, creating Index pages and transcluding books are left to a very small number of contributors. These point to a lack of not just awareness and resources, but also a need for capacity-building efforts to address the skill gaps, improvements in digital infrastructures to resolve basic issues with platforms, and diversification of the scope of work undertaken. For instance, the most recent <a title="Community Wishlist Survey 2022" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022">Community Wishlist Survey 2022</a> highlights some basic fixes that need attention− such as bugs with the search and replace function to improve search and mass uploads −to more advanced work such as expanding existing functionality in indexing, integrating structured data and <a title="Content translation group" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Content_translation_group">translation tools</a> and functionalities across Indian languages, to name a few.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A research needs assessment survey conducted by CIS-A2K last year also highlighted the need for better technological support for Wikimedia projects, and capacity-building in important areas of work in the Indian language communities. While this is not specific to Wikisource alone, observations by community members and active Wikisource contributors over the last few years illustrate that many of these concerns and knowledge gaps are prevalent in this community as well. This study was therefore an attempt to identify these challenges, by collecting baseline data on key areas of work in Indian language Wikisource projects, beginning with a focus on selected language communities, and areas of interest. The attempt was also to enable contributors to achieve a more detailed understanding of the requirements of communities, in the contexts of certain languages, and aid in developing potential strategies to address them.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Research objectives</h2>
<p>The study had two areas of focus:</p>
<ul>
<li>What are the key challenges with working on Indian language Wikisource projects currently? These may include anything from obstacles in Wikisource workflow, policies and open licences, to challenges such as quality of content and lack of community engagement?</li>
<li>What are gap areas and spaces for improvement in the infrastructure of these platforms, especially related to technological capacity, resources and training?</li></ul>
<h2>Research methods</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The study adopted a mixed methods approach, comprising a survey and interviews with community members. The survey focussed on key areas of ongoing work, and potential challenges for Wikisource projects in India - including technological support, skill-building, policies on content donation and curation, and open access and licensing. The survey was opened to all Wikisource communities and publicised on relevant mailing lists and community platforms. Simultaneously, a detailed interview questionnaire was also prepared, along with the selection criteria for interviews with community members. The project team worked with one short-term research assistant over a 2–3-month period for the data collection through interviews and surveys. The research assistant also provided translation support as needed and worked closely in coordinating with community members.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The criteria considered for selection of the language communities for the study were language family and size, amount of content on Wikisource (according to bytes/number of proofread pages), recent activity and a good track record/sustained progress and challenges with the same over the last several years. External factors, such as visibility and prevalence of the languages on other online platforms, technical and cultural resources and complexities of working with certain languages etc. were also considered during the selection process. Keeping these in mind, the languages selected for this study were as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://ta.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Tamil Wikisource</a> (One of the largest Wikisource communities in India, which has considerable content, is active and has seen steady growth over the last few years)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://as.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Assamese Wikisource</a> (A growing Wikisource community, which has also seen a lot of activity in recent years)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://ml.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Malayalam Wikisource</a> (A large and active Wikisource community, which in recent years has some decline in engagement, despite good resources and activity on other Wiki platforms)</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Using a purposive sampling technique, the team identified community members for interviews across these three languages and reached out over the course of six months in order to conduct semi-structured interviews. The criteria for selection of interviewees included a mix of senior/experienced and new contributors, those working across several projects and languages, those with expertise in specific/advanced technical areas of Wikisource, licensing and content donation efforts, and keeping in mind gender parity within the sample. There were however several challenges with this exercise, including basic barriers such as bad internet and phone connectivity, digital fatigue and unavailability of people due to the second wave of the pandemic, and limited time on Wikimedia projects. As a result, this method was unsuccessful, as it managed to gather very limited data for the study. The timeline of the survey was also extended as a result, and it received a total of 21 responses. The survey data offers several insights into some of these key areas of work and challenges, and the following is a report based on an analysis of this limited data set and observations on the same. Given the limited sample size and final dataset, it would be important to note that we may need several steps before the observations/findings may be considered to be representative at any scale.</p>
<h2>Observations and Learnings</h2>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
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<td>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As mentioned earlier, the dataset comprised of 21 respondents on the survey, many of them contributors across diverse Wikimedia projects including English and Indian language Wikipedia projects, <a title="Wikisource" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource">Wikisource</a>, <a title="Wikibooks" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks">Wikibooks</a>, <a title="Wikidata" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata">Wikidata</a>, <a title="Wikiquote" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiquote">Wikiquote</a>, <a title="Wiktionary" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary">Wiktionary</a>, <a title="Wikivoyage" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage">Wikivoyage</a>, <a title="Wikimedia Commons" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Commons">Wikimedia Commons</a>, software such as Media Wiki, and initiatives like Wikimedia in Education. The respondents ranged across nine languages (in alphabetical order) – <a class="external text" href="https://as.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Assamese</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://bn.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Bengali</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://en.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">English</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://hi.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Hindi</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://kn.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Kannada</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://mr.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Marathi</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://ml.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Malayalam</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://pa.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Punjabi</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://te.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Telugu</a> and <a class="external text" href="https://ta.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Tamil</a>. Several of them are also part of user groups working in some of these languages. The experience of the contributors’ ranges from 6 months to 12 years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Almost all the respondents note that contributions towards proofreading, and bringing more content on the <a title="Wikisource" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource">Wikisource projects</a> (including work on related processes by the <a title="Volunteer Response Team" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Response_Team">Volunteer Response Team</a>, previously known as <a title="Open-source Ticket Request System" class="mw-redirect" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open-source_Ticket_Request_System">Open Source Ticket Request System</a>, and OCR) have been key milestones in their work, either as individuals or communities. Some respondents have also pointed out some new work such as audio books, and working on technological aspects, especially with gadgets and best practices shared by other global communities. The data offers some key insights into the kinds of challenges currently faced by <a title="Indic Wikisource Community" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Indic_Wikisource_Community">Indian language Wikisource contributors</a>, and what could be potential areas of improvement.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As noted in Fig.1, an overwhelming percentage of the respondents noted that ‘capacity-building and training’ (81%) is an area that needs the most improvement, followed closely by ‘community engagement’ (66%) and ‘technological infrastructure’ (57%). These are key areas that show repetitive patterns across the data set, in terms of recurring challenges as well. As noted by respondents, training in Wikisource workflows, procedure and guidance, learning to use advanced templates/techniques, recruiting new volunteers etc. have been key challenges. Community engagement has seen a dip, especially over last year with the pandemic and related decline in activity on projects, as well as events and therefore opportunities to meet. There is a need for more contributors and strategies to encourage work and retain them on the projects. Scanning and post-production processing of scans emerged as a significant challenge, given lack of resources and infrastructure, and related issues such as poor quality of scanned work and no uniformity in the book selection criteria. There are also some areas of technical support such as broken tools on Wikisource projects, missing symbols in some language tool bars, and an abundance of formatting tags which could present barriers for new contributors.</p>
<p>The following are some of the responses and observations in specific areas mentioned above:</p>
</td>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Figure2.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Figure 2" /></th>
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</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Capacity-building and training</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As most contributors would be well aware, capacity-building and technological infrastructure are two closely connected aspects of Wikimedia projects. The responses under this thematic reflect the same, in terms of a need for better training in optimising the use of available and advanced technical skills for Wikisource projects. This includes training on specific skills and processes such as <a title="Scanning old books" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scanning_old_books">scanning</a>, <a title="en:Optical character recognition" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition">text conversion</a>, <a title="wikisource:Help:Beginner's guide to proofreading" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:Beginner%27s_guide_to_proofreading">formatting</a>, sourcing, <a title="wikisource:Help:Transclusion" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:Transclusion">transclusion</a>, creating gadgets, writing bots. There is a need for better writing and spelling skills to improve the quality of content generated. The survey also suggested potential ways to address these skill gaps, all of which were seen as relevant by a majority of respondents (66.7%). [See Fig 2]</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Community Engagement</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Community engagement ranked second in terms of the challenges noted by respondents on the survey. The survey also looked at engagement in comparison with Wikipedia projects, as it has been observed that the latter see more active participation. This was confirmed by some of the responses as well. Some of the main reasons for lack of participation as noted by respondents is that Wikisource is a specialised project, that needs a specific skill-set and demands time and effort, hence may not appeal to all contributors. Also, it has lesser content and visibility compared to some of the Wikipedias or other projects which may be more easily updated. Thus, there is a need for actively recruiting new volunteers, and capacity-building to enable more contributions, as well as targeted outreach efforts in spaces related to literature and books to enhance discoverability. Some respondents also mentioned that a lack of awareness, coordination and interaction among contributors could be potential reasons. Finally, there are also external factors such as balancing volunteer work with other commitments such as family and financial problems, many contributors being students who move on to full-time careers, effects of the pandemic and paucity of time and interaction, and loss of interest over time in the projects.</p>
<p>Again, efforts to address community engagement need some strategic measures, including but not limited to community interaction, incentives and better visibility for work in, as noted in Fig.3.</p>
<h3>Technological infrastructure</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Technological infrastructure, which is one of the key areas of focus for this study, has also been a persistent challenge for Indian language communities, also given the resource-heavy work any form of computing with Indic languages entails. While some respondents did not notice any specific issues in their communities, there were some patterns or gaps that were reflected across communities. There is a need for basic hardware like scanners and good computers, or rather centralised facilities for scanning and good internet connectivity in order to cover more collections and regional areas. In addition to this, there is also a need for technical improvements such as easy-to-use widgets, gadgets and better tags to enhance formatting work as part of the transcription of texts, incorporating certain signs and symbols within toolbars, spell-checker, full list of syntaxes while proofreading, and stages for fixing mistakes and adding formatting tags. An important observation was that some language communities access and edit Wikisource on mobile phones, so there is a need for a mobile application that can provide a seamless editing experience, and connect more people with the projects. As mentioned earlier, there are also several technical fixes such as a number of pending bugs in projects. A related requirement therefore is for MediaWiki developers with good language skills to work on translation of interfaces. A few respondents also mentioned additional challenges such as improvement of new books, Graphical User Interface (GUI) and page layout, and the functionality to view Wikisource in other formats as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Some specific areas of improvement were also assessed on the survey, drawing upon a review of the <a title="Community Wishlist Survey" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey">community wishlists</a> for the last few years. These included Optical Character Recognition (OCR), translation, visual editor, transclusion, user interface, search function and export of books. While all these functionalities did not receive responses from the entire set, many found these to be key challenges. OCR received the most responses (19), with 31.6% assessing this at 1 (needs minimal updates, functional with space for innovation). Translation received 18 responses, with 38.9% marking this at 4 (major challenges, requires focused work). Similarly, transclusion also received 18 responses with about 27.8% voting at 5 (significant challenges, requires long-term effort and resources). Visual editor, search function and export of books all received 17 responses each, with a majority in all three assessing these as 5. Of these search function had more people assessing the functionality at 5 (41.2%), followed closely by visual editor and export of books (35.3% each). User interface received 16 responses, with 31.3 % of respondents assessing it at 5 as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Wikisource.png/@@images/5072e098-7223-42ce-b52b-71503241c5e4.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Open Access and Content Creation</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In addition to the above, content curation and related aspects of open access and relicensing are also spaces with prevalent knowledge gaps in terms of protocols and best practices, which poses a challenge for content generation on Wikisource projects. Lack of awareness about Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and relicensing in fact has been a significant impediment in content donation efforts, across projects. In this survey, a large number of respondents (42.6%) also said they were either unaware of these issues with Wikisource or about IPR itself, or mentioned that it was not applicable in this context. Among the challenges/issues mentioned, the need for simple, easily accessible advocacy material in print about open access was prominent, in order to encourage content creators/authors to share work on open licences. It was also noted that this process may be difficult for people who are not well-versed in the technical/legal aspects of the project, especially in terms of tracking down individual creators for consent to re-license and share their work. Respondents also noted that this work needs support from institutions to help set up collaborations, such as with educational organisations, publishing houses and authors, as also an understanding of official documentation and wider promotion etc. which may encourage more people to share content on open licences.</p>
<p>All of these aspects are further reflected in terms of strategies to address these issues as well, as observed in Fig. 4.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A similar disparity exists with content curation best practices as well, with a majority of respondents noting that their respective communities do not have clearly defined protocols for content curation. While such benchmarking is naturally difficult given several socio-cultural and linguistic subjectivities of each project, this also means that what makes it to Wikisource in a particular language can be defined by many factors, which also informs the quality, types and formats of content produced. Potential methods to address this include developing guidelines for content creation, and forms of review by experts as well as community members, all of which ranked high in the survey responses. ( See Fig 5)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As we did not receive enough responses on the interview questionnaires, there was not much additional qualitative data that could be gathered. There are however resonances with the survey responses, namely in terms of technical/hardware challenges such as poor quality of scanning, and the need for an app which is user-friendly and will further facilitate mobile editing, especially in areas with limited digital infrastructure and access. Some observations include the importance of the <a title="Volunteer Response Team" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Response_Team">OTRS process</a> in adding new content, and the need for better online and offline training, especially for new volunteers, in technical skills. Similarly, collaborations with educational institutions and local print media could be useful in creating more awareness, and therefore tapping into more content and resources in terms of new volunteers. Additionally, there are also some interesting observations on individual communities working on connecting work across projects, for example Wikisource and Wikiquote.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Conclusions and Recommendations</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While the scope of the study had to be reduced significantly given several methodological challenges and external factors as mentioned earlier, the analysis of data does offer some significant learnings on the current challenges prevalent across Indian language Wikisource projects. Needless to say, many of these are also fairly contextual and nuanced, depending on how well-resourced certain languages are, given factors such as basic internet connectivity and digital literacy. The following is a short summary of key recommendations from this exercise.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Technological Infrastructure:</strong> Across the board, gaps in development of technological infrastructure have been prominent, ranging from basic fixes to advanced tools and user-friendly apps that may help mitigate some of the issues related to access. It is also notable that early challenges such as OCR and translation do not present as significant obstacles here (but continue to remain areas of ongoing work); features such as the visual editor, search and export functionalities emerged as continual challenges. The need for a user-friendly mobile app is also an important observation here. Some of this work is also quite resource-intensive in terms of funding; it would be prudent to look at collaborations with related organisations and local fundraising efforts that may help facilitate the same.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Capacity-Building:</strong> Similarly, capacity-building efforts need to be strengthened within communities, given the nature of work which is specialised and often quite technical( for example the process of transclusion). In addition to bringing in new volunteers, and equipping them with the requisite skill-sets to contribute effectively, there is a need for contributors with advanced skill-sets who may be able to address more technical challenges. Efforts here could include reaching out to the wider free and open source communities for external expertise, and working on a collaborative model of workshopping around strategic issues, and developing relevant skill-sets. Community-engagement: As noted by many respondents, bringing in new volunteers and their retention on projects has been a continual challenge, also due to the factors mentioned above. Improvements in technical infrastructure and capacity-building would help address some of these challenges as well. In addition to this, as noted by respondents, developing proactive collaborations with diverse institutions and individuals (educational/media/creative practice) would help widen networks, hence creating better awareness and visibility for work, such as through social media content and may also foster better engagement.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Content Curation and Open Access:</strong> As is widely understood, discourse around open access and relicensing is layered, and the protocols often vary widely depending on linguistic factors and cultural context. Instead of developing benchmarks, it may be prudent therefore to develop accessible content on existing, global relicensing protocols, in translation across languages. These may be further used by communities to understand and engage better with efforts in content donation. Guidelines for content curation will again need to be similarly developed and modified, keeping in mind how policies also evolve and change. An important consideration here in addition to quality, is also that of ethics of access and use, especially by communities themselves.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This short study was an effort to map some of the prevalent infrastructural challenges that underlie work on Indian language Wikisource projects. The observations from this report may offer useful insights in thinking through and developing strategies to address these gaps, through collaborative efforts in training and building resources for projects.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-infrastructural-needs-of-indian-language-wikisource-projects'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-infrastructural-needs-of-indian-language-wikisource-projects</a>
</p>
No publisherPuthiya Purayil SnehaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen Content2022-10-21T13:21:20ZBlog EntryExploring Knowledge Repositories on Water Resources in India
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-exploring-knowledge-repositories-on-water-resources-in-india
<b>This research study explores knowledge repositories on water resources in India, with a focus on how the digital transition has impacted the process of creation & access to these resources and possible collaborations to build open digital repositories around water. The research was undertaken by Subodh Kulkarni, with editorial inputs by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Chiara Furtado. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2021–2022.</b>
<p>Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Exploring_Knowledge_repositories_on_Water_resources_in_India"><strong>here</strong></a>.</p>
<hr />
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Water is the most precious natural resource for the existence of all living organisms on earth. As human beings have not treated it respectfully in recent years, there are increasing challenges with accessibility and availability of water across large parts of the world today. In India, the groundwater levels are depleting at an alarming rate due to over exploitation<sup>.[1]</sup> The quality of surface water reserves is degenerating due to pollution caused by discharge of wastewater, sewage and untreated industrial effluents.<sup><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Exploring_Knowledge_repositories_on_Water_resources_in_India#cite_note-2">[2]</a></sup> The condition of rivers is getting worse due to illegal and unregulated use of these resources across India. Due to damming almost all the rivers flow for only 8-10 months in a year. Above all, the pollution caused due to solid wastes and effluents have destroyed living organisms and aquatic life. Therefore most of the rivers in India are called ‘dying rivers’.<sup><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Exploring_Knowledge_repositories_on_Water_resources_in_India#cite_note-3">[3]</a></sup> There have been several discussions and debates happening around this degradation of rivers, especially in the last decade.<sup><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Exploring_Knowledge_repositories_on_Water_resources_in_India#cite_note-4">[4]</a></sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Efforts by various organisations are afoot to document the state of affairs, spread awareness and undertake activities on the ground with community participation. Citizen-led efforts have also been instrumental in strengthening several water conservation efforts in India. It is seen that these peoples’ movements have been further strengthened due to empowerment through enhanced awareness of these issues around conservation, and better access to knowledge on the subject, especially through scientific studies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">CIS-A2K has initiated <a title="CIS-A2K/Events/Partnerships under Project Jal Bodh - Knowledge resource on Water" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Partnerships_under_Project_Jal_Bodh_-_Knowledge_resource_on_Water">Project Jalbodh</a> in 2017 in collaboration with a few organisations to generate water related content. During one of the ‘River dialogues’, a CIS-A2K member was invited to introduce Wikimedia projects to the organisations working on water resources. In the discussions, it was revealed that there is negligible content about rivers, water pollution, floods, irrigation system etc. in Wikimedia projects. Following this, an analysis of content on these subjects on Marathi, Hindi & English Wikipedia and media on Wikimedia Commons was undertaken. The need to develop structured categorisation of content was also felt. As the organisations are trying their best to disseminate knowledge about water issues, they realised the potential of Wikimedia projects due to the high level of searchable content available on these platforms which can be accessed by the general public. In keeping with these objectives, over the last two years, various workshops were conducted with organisations working at the grassroots to develop the structure of articles, categorisation and re-licensing of source material on these topics across various Wikimedia projects. <a class="text external" href="http://tarunbharatsangh.in/" rel="nofollow">Tarun Bharat Sangh</a> is leading this process, and has uploaded <a title="c:Category:Books published by Tarun Bharat Sangh, India" class="extiw" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_published_by_Tarun_Bharat_Sangh,_India">90 books & reports on Wikimedia Commons</a> under free licences, and created articles on rivers in Marathi, Hindi and English Wikipedia projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">During these content generation events it was realised that the organisations are working closely with communities which are conversant mostly with local or regional Indian languages only. The availability and access to water related resources in these languages is therefore an important issue. The communities are in need of simple, accessible and ready to use content in various forms. They also require a platform on which they can document/archive their water conservation efforts for other communities to take lessons and motivation from these projects.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Research Questions</h2>
<p>This study was framed by the following questions:</p>
<ol>
<li>How has the digital transition impacted the process of creation and access to water related resources in India.</li>
<li>What are possible collaborations and processes to build open digital repositories around water, with special reference to rivers.</li></ol>
<h2></h2>
<h2>Methods</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The study adopted a qualitative approach, with the method comprising online/offline, semi-structured interviews with organisations working in the water resources sector. Based on desk research and conversations with existing partners in the sector, a long list of organisations was developed.(See Annexure I). Further, eight organisations were shortlisted for interviews based on their experience and impact of work in the water conservation sector. Due to various constraints, eventually interviews with three organisations were completed. The interview questionnaire focused on the nature, objective and scope of the offline and online resources available, human resources involved, language aspects, documentation practices, methods of dissemination, utility, accessibility, training value of the material, intellectual property rights (IPR) policies and public outreach efforts. These interviews were conducted online and in-person and recorded with consent from the participants, along with a clear explanation on the objectives of the study and the data collection. As mentioned above, there were a few constraints with the research process and methods adopted, as well as external factors. These included restrictions on travel and in-person meetings due to the COVID 19 pandemic, and challenges with online platforms. Some of the organisations were not comfortable with online or telephonic interviews and insisted upon physical interactions. The online interviews were less effective with the organisations as they were unaware about the free & open knowledge platforms like Wikimedia, Internet Archive etc. In addition to this, introductory sessions were conducted to give them a background to the work of the programme and context of the study. A general challenge here was also logistical issues related to scheduling conversations etc. given that personnel were located across different departments.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Description of Organisations Interviewed</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Advanced Centre for Water Resources Development and Management [ACWADAM]'</strong><em> </em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://www.acwadam.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=featured&Itemid=101" rel="nofollow">ACWADAM</a> is an organisation dedicated to establish a groundwater management agenda in India. It is a premier education and action research institution engaged in developing and disseminating knowledge on groundwater management. It is also involved in facilitation of projects on groundwater management through action research programmes, training and policy advocacy, with a collaborative, participatory approach. ACWADAM's mission is to facilitate groundwater management programmes in partnership with various organisations spread across the country. Over the years, it has developed expertise on aquifer-based groundwater management based on the science of hydrogeology.</p>
<div><strong>Action for Agricultural Renewal in Maharashtra [AFARM]</strong></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://www.afarm.org/index" rel="nofollow">AFARM</a> was founded in 1969 as an apex Institution to coordinate programmes of voluntary organisations engaged in providing drinking water and agricultural extension services to villages in drought affected Maharashtra. It is one of the pioneering networking organisations in the country working in the areas of sustainable agriculture, irrigation, disaster relief and drinking water resource management. It acts as a platform for several civil society organisations for the promotion of sustainable and equitable development. The emphasis is on capacity building of organisations through action research, advocacy and field projects at grassroots. AFARM is providing support and consultancy at the policy level.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>BAIF Development Research Foundation [BAIF]</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://baif.org.in/" rel="nofollow">BAIF</a> was established on the strong foundation of Gandhian values with the aim to improve quality of life through development research and capacity building. BAIF’s vision is to build a self-reliant rural society assured of food security, safe drinking water, good health, gender equity, low child mortality, literacy, high moral values and clean environment. It is striving towards the mission to create opportunities of gainful self-employment for the rural and tribal families with a focus on disadvantaged sections, ensuring sustainable livelihood, healthy environment, better quality of life and good human values. BAIF believes in field research, effective use of local resources, extension of appropriate technologies and upgradation of skills and capabilities with community participation.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Observations</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Availability of digital datasets on water resource projects:</strong> Many organisations in the sector rely on online information and databases on sites such as – <a class="text external" href="https://censusindia.gov.in/census.website/" rel="nofollow">Census of India</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://mausam.imd.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">IMD</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://earth.google.com/web/" rel="nofollow">Google Earth</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/home/index.php" rel="nofollow">Bhuvan</a>, <a class="text external" href="http://cgwb.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">CGWB</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://gsda.maharashtra.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">GSDA</a>, <a class="text external" href="http://mrsac.maharashtra.gov.in/mahagsda/" rel="nofollow">MRSAC</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://bhulekh.mahabhumi.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Bhumi Abhilekh</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://www.surveyofindia.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Survey of India</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://www.indiawaterportal.org/" rel="nofollow">India Water Portal</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://farmer.gov.in/stateagridepartments.aspx" rel="nofollow">Agriculture Department</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://wrd.maharashtra.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Irrigation Department</a>, <a class="text external" href="http://moef.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Forest Department</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://maharain.maharashtra.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Maharain</a> etc. Many of the global datasets on water resources and related topics such as agriculture, population, topography, forestry, climate change etc. are also in the public domain. However, the updating of data is not done regularly. For example, we have to refer to census data for 2011 even in 2022. Many of the datasets are also at a macro level, providing very little granular data. The water resource projects mostly need micro level data which is collected through on-ground surveys.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Effectiveness of digital platforms, and challenges with internet coverage:</strong> Organisations have found the use of digital platforms and tools effective for quick exchange of common training modules, process videos, drawings and manuals, as part of their water resource projects. The digital format has also been very effective for dissemination of advisories, alerts etc. through smartphones, which have enabled better access to information on gadgets quickly. However, two-way communication is necessary when timely solutions to queries of the farmers are to be provided, and that has been difficult to set up in a sustained manner through a digital format.<br />Many organisations in the sector also engage in capacity-building efforts for staff, volunteers and communities. When building these communities and mobilising them for action, the process needs spontaneous feedback, live conversations, reading the expressions and actual interactions with each other. All these things are completely missing from virtual interactions. These organisational processes and capacity-building efforts were grossly hampered during the pandemic due to a reliance on online meetings alone.<br />There are still challenges of internet connectivity in rural and remote areas where the communities are involved in water management projects. The consistency of bandwidth is a major issue when it comes to streaming of audio-visual content, uploading of content, online workshops, etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Lack of documentation skills, and challenges with language:</strong> Most of the documents used in water resources related projects are technical in nature. The technical team invests more time in the implementation, hence the time and skills required for documentation are limited. This gap between technical skills and documentation skills is challenging. There are ample structures, technological methods, apps etc. for collecting the data but at the same time, the resources for data collection or structured data development are not sufficiently provided. There are also several language-related challenges at the field level. Crucial parts of the training and awareness material need to be translated in the local languages as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Mobilisation and motivation for communities and wider public:</strong> The offline and online content is not very effective to mobilise or motivate the people involved in action at the field level in water conservation efforts. The organisers are exploring all the modes of communication and content available, but there is no alternative for human leadership.<br />Some organisations like Paani Foundation have beautifully captured the success stories of these efforts in dramatic short films. These films inspire the public temporarily, but the content can not be used often. Also, the production costs of such content are high resulting in very few options for wider outreach to engage a general audience.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Negligible content about water sector in public domain or Wikimedia projects in local languages:</strong> All the organisations agree upon the lack of searchable content on water related topics on the internet and in the public domain through projects like Wikimedia. The activists looking for solutions on some technical issues, the community searching for good projects in other parts of India or the planners looking for some structured databases on impact of projects, all of them get very little content on the internet. The local language content on water resources has almost negligible presence.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Need for a comprehensive portal giving information to stakeholders at different levels:</strong> The different stakeholders concerned with water resources seek information and data on various levels and diverse formats according to application and purpose. As of now, no such comprehensive platform in multiple languages exists which caters to these needs. The requirements include a wide range like, sample design of water conservation structures, contour maps of region, rainfall data, estimates of raw material, ground water aquifer maps, water pollution parameters, operation of dams, irrigation systems, water policies, water treaties, government notifications, etc. A well structured and categorised knowledge repository and database on water resources is the need of the hour. Such a knowledge base would strongly support the actions on the ground.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Recommendations</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Developing a Process Documentation Strategy:</strong> The continuous changes in knowledge resources and data regarding various topics related to water resources need to be documented from time to time. The dynamic nature of water related issues requires a proactive process documentation strategy for the organisation as well as the citizen science groups in the society. The ideal example is the trajectory of the monsoon season in India every year and the rainfall in various agro-climatic regions. The watershed conservation projects, river rejuvenation programs, pollution control projects are long term processes with long term impacts. The journey of several years is painstaking, needs patience and struggles on the ground with constant motivational efforts. The persons directly engaged in these efforts may not be able to spend time on documentation of the many resources that are a result of these efforts. Hence, a solid process documentation strategy is required. The process documentation is also crucial for assessment of project impact on environment, livelihoods, economy, geography and people. There are also citizen movements which have been active for a long time, which are instrumental in giving birth to new laws, rules, guidelines, notifications, etc. The different milestones and turning points in these processes are to be documented in time. This documentation can guide the larger citizens’ movements to design their strategies and to resolve issues arising during the course of this work, and across different thematic areas as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Accessible datasets open for all in the public domain:</strong> There is an important need to compile the datasets on water resources developed by different agencies with people’s participation and government funding for the planning of public works or schemes. The open access to such reliable and factual datasets in the public domain serves the purpose of transparency and accountability of public infrastructure programmes. This facility for society would provide impetus to rigorous analysis, studies, research and innovative designing of public infrastructure. The processing and presentation of data in visual formats, including infographics can boost understanding, awareness, and logical thinking processes among enthusiasts who would like to engage with water conservation efforts. Different perspectives can emerge after relating and comparing datasets. The networking of agencies, organisations, experts and citizen forums would further develop complementary datasets. This synergy will definitely create a community data pool beneficial for everyone.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Digital and open access content development for capacity building of field level activists:</strong> Various organisations have developed training material for field level activists in different formats. Most of this is not online or digitised. Through networking efforts, the integration could be done to develop systematic modules for capacity building. The modules would be hosted as Open Educational Resources (OERs) on Wikimedia projects or other free knowledge platforms. The topic wise categories will make the selection easier. These categories can include local water source, rivers, waste water disposal, pollution, water based livelihoods, water conservation treatments etc. The format combining course work with some hands-on experiments is beneficial to facilitate the process of self-study, self-assessment and self-design. This online repository can be accessed by the field activists working on water resources anytime, anywhere when they need guidance to resolve issues or trouble-shooting on site.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Orientation of organisations towards free knowledge platforms and Wikimedia projects:</strong> Over the years, the organisations working in this sector have created valuable material for wider circulation to create awareness and empower communities. These resources have been used effectively and in a few locations for a certain period of time. The outreach and dissemination through integration of these resources will have more impact in the coming years if digital platforms are utilised efficiently. The basic orientation of the organisations regarding such free knowledge digital platforms, including copyright issues, Creative Commons licences, digitisation process and internet technologies is necessary to kick start this knowledge dissemination movement. Some pilot projects could be executed to demonstrate the potential of Wikimedia projects in database generation, documentation of case studies, audio-visual repositories and reference libraries.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;"><br /></h2>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">References<br /></h2>
<ol><li>"Groundwater". edugreen.teri.res.in. Retrieved 2022-09-28.</li><li>"‘Discharge of untreated industrial effluents, sewage major source of river pollution’". The Indian Express. 2018-12-21. Retrieved 2022-09-28.</li><li>Naresh Singaravelu & Harshita Mishra (6 June 2019). "Rivers in India: a reality check". https://www.thehindu.com/. The Hindu. Retrieved 28 Sep 2022.</li><li>"Living rivers, dying rivers: Everything you wanted to know about rivers in India | India Water Portal". www.indiawaterportal.org. Retrieved 2022-09-28.</li></ol>
<hr />
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-exploring-knowledge-repositories-on-water-resources-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-exploring-knowledge-repositories-on-water-resources-in-india</a>
</p>
No publishersubodhAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen Content2022-10-21T13:23:24ZBlog EntryDigitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-of-o-bharat
<b>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.</b>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/OBharatPortuguese.jpg" alt="O Bharat Portuguese" class="image-inline" title="O Bharat Portuguese" /></th><th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_OBharatMarathi.jpg" alt="O Bharat Marathi" class="image-inline" title="O Bharat Marathi" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Above: Front page of O Bharat in Portuguese</td>
<td>Above: Front page of O Bharat in Marathi</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Context</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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 <a class="text external" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Monuments_and_memorials_in_Goa">monuments in South Goa</a>. 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 <a class="text external" href="http://www.bharatkar.info/" rel="nofollow">Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust</a>, non-profit organisation in Goa to archive the works of Bharatkar.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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 <a class="text external" href="http://centrallibrary.goa.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Goa Central Public Library</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">About the 36 Year Run of ‘O Bharat’ upto India’s Independence</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Partnerships</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The partnerships with various stakeholders were developed after a <a class="text external" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Digitisation_review_and_partnerships_in_Goa">series of discussions</a> 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.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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 <a class="text external" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:O_Bharat">project on Wikimedia Commons</a> 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.</p>
<h3>Media links</h3>
<p>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 -</p>
<ul>
<li><a class="text external" href="https://epaper.dainikgomantak.com/FlashClient/Show_Story_IPad.aspx?storySrc=http://epaper-sakal-application.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/DainikGomantakEpaperData/DainikGomantak/GOA/2022/08/18/Main/DainikGomantak_Goa_2022_08_18_Main_DA_013/588_1306_1362_2406.jpg&uname=" rel="nofollow">News in Gomantak</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="https://epaper.navhindtimes.in/" rel="nofollow">News in Navhind Times</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="http://epaper.thegoan.net/m5/3564268/Goan-Varta/Goan-Varta#page/3/1" rel="nofollow">News in Goan Varta</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="http://epaper.navprabha.com/" rel="nofollow">News in Navprabha</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p>This was originally published on <a class="external-link" href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/September_2022/Contents/India_report">Wikimedia Blog</a> in September 2022</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-of-o-bharat'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-of-o-bharat</a>
</p>
No publishersubodhCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaGLAMWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen ContentOpenness2022-10-11T14:53:58ZBlog EntryDigitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-o-bharat
<b>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.</b>
<h3><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Bharat.png" alt="Bharat" class="image-inline" title="Bharat" /></h3>
<h3>Context</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>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 </span><a class="text external" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Monuments_and_memorials_in_Goa">monuments in South Goa</a><span>. 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 </span><a class="text external" href="http://www.bharatkar.info/" rel="nofollow">Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust</a><span>, non-profit organisation in Goa to archive the works of Bharatkar.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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 <a class="text external" href="http://centrallibrary.goa.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Goa Central Public Library</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">About the 36 Year Run of ‘O Bharat’ upto India’s Independence</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Partnerships</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The partnerships with various stakeholders were developed after a <a class="text external" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Digitisation_review_and_partnerships_in_Goa">series of discussions</a> 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.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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. <span>The Chief Minister of Goa inaugurated the </span><a class="text external" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:O_Bharat">project on Wikimedia Commons</a><span> 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.</span></p>
<h3>Media links</h3>
<p>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 -</p>
<ul>
<li><a class="text external" href="https://epaper.dainikgomantak.com/FlashClient/Show_Story_IPad.aspx?storySrc=http://epaper-sakal-application.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/DainikGomantakEpaperData/DainikGomantak/GOA/2022/08/18/Main/DainikGomantak_Goa_2022_08_18_Main_DA_013/588_1306_1362_2406.jpg&uname=" rel="nofollow">News in Gomantak</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="https://epaper.navhindtimes.in/" rel="nofollow">News in Navhind Times</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="http://epaper.thegoan.net/m5/3564268/Goan-Varta/Goan-Varta#page/3/1" rel="nofollow">News in Goan Varta</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="http://epaper.navprabha.com/" rel="nofollow">News in Navprabha</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p><span>This was originally published on </span><a class="external-link" href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/September_2022/Contents/India_report">Wikimedia Blog</a><span> in September 2022</span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-o-bharat'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-o-bharat</a>
</p>
No publishersubodhCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen ContentOpenness2022-10-11T13:11:15ZBlog EntryContent Creation on Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/content-creation-on-eastern-punjabi-wikipedia
<b>This is a short study on the nature of content creation related to Punjab on Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia, its challenges and opportunities, and observations and potential strategies to address the same. The report has been authored by Satpal Singh, with editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and external review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019–2020. </b>
<h3><strong><br /></strong></h3>
<h3><strong>Introduction </strong></h3>
<p dir="ltr">The objective of this study is to understand the challenges for content creation related to Punjab that exists on Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia. There are articles about Punjabi language and culture on Punjabi Wikipedia but there is a need for better understanding of the nature of this content from the perspective of the readers’ interests, coverage of topics, and quality. A large community of interested Punjabi Wikimedians have been actively working over several years to introduce Wikimedia and related projects to people across the world, including those from their own community. An important part of achieving this goal is to contribute to and build more diverse and bettergood quality content about Punjab on Wikipedia. This short study is therefore an attempt to analyse the nature of existing content, challenges in content creation/curation and outreach, and some observations and strategies to address the same.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><br /></strong></p>
<h3><strong>Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia</strong></h3>
<p dir="ltr">Wikipedia is a multilingual online encyclopedia. It is available in around 290+ languages. There are two Punjabi Wikipedia editions, which are <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%AE%E0%A9%81%E0%A9%B1%E0%A8%96_%E0%A8%B8%E0%A8%AB%E0%A8%BC%E0%A8%BE">Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia</a> and <a href="https://pnb.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%BE%DB%81%D9%84%D8%A7_%D8%B5%D9%81%DB%81">Western Punjabi Wikipedia</a>. Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia is in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurmukhi">Gurmukhi script</a> and Western Punjabi Wikipedia is in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahmukhi_alphabet">Shahmukhi script</a>. This study focuses on the Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia. The Eastern edition domain came into existence on 3 June 2002, but the first three articles were only written in August 2004. There was not much contribution made during the next six years. In July 2012, it had reached 2,400 articles. Then a group of people, largely students from Punjabi University, Patiala started contributing actively on Punjabi Wikipedia, as a result of which it became an active Wikipedia in 2013, and has stayed so until date. There are currently <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%96%E0%A8%BC%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%B8:%E0%A8%85%E0%A9%B0%E0%A8%95%E0%A9%9C%E0%A9%87">35, 351 articles</a> on the Gurmukhi Punjabi Wikipedia, with a number of registered users on Punjabi Wikipedia at <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%96%E0%A8%BC%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%B8:%E0%A8%85%E0%A9%B0%E0%A8%95%E0%A9%9C%E0%A9%87">36,348.</a> [1]</p>
<p dir="ltr">One group of people has been proactively involved in Punjabi Wikipedia for a long time, which is the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_Wikimedians">Punjabi Wikimedians User Group.</a> Apart from this, a number of people from different parts of the world also contribute to Wikipedia. Punjabi Wikimedians got affiliation as a User Group from Wikimedia Foundation in <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognition_Punjabi_Wikimedians">November 2015</a>. Punjabi Wikimedians was the first affiliated user group from India, and have been involved in several activities and initiatives undertaken towards content creation. They organized <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2016">WikiConference India in 2016</a> at Chandigarh and their members have participated in various events and conferences. They have also collaborated with other institutions in order to encourage content creation on Punjabi Wikipedia, one example is the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_Wikimedians/GLAM/Punjabi_Sahit_Academy">collaboration with Punjabi Sahitya Academy</a>. Apart from Wikipedia, this user group is also active on <a href="http://pa.wikisource.org">Punjabi Wikisource</a>, <a href="https://pa.wiktionary.org">Punjabi Wiktionary</a>, <a href="http://wikidata.org">Wikidata</a> and <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org">Wikimedia Commons</a>. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Patiala/1">first meeting</a> of the Punjabi Wiki community was organized in Patiala on 1 February 2015. After that the community conducted various monthly meetups in different parts of the Punjab. People from the community also joined various training programs and events in different parts of India and participated in various conferences in other countries. </p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><br /></strong></p>
<h3><strong>Research Objectives and Method</strong></h3>
<p dir="ltr">This study analyses various aspects of how content related to Punjab is created on Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia. This analysis would help in understanding the gap between what kind of content presently exists and what is needed, from the perspective of Punjabi language contributors and users. The objective of this study is to understand how much content related to Punjab exists on this Wikipedia at present; what is the nature of this content, what are challenges for content creation and possible strategies to address the same. There is a broader understanding that while content is being created proactively, there is still a need to analyse its quality and prevalent gaps if any, which would encourage more contributors and readers to actively engage with Punjabi Wikipedia. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The method for this study consisted of analysis of the existing content on Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia, and conversations with selected Wikimedians on their assessment of content on topics related to Punjab. The main topics for this study were articles related to the Punjab region, including culture, literature, and politics. To understand if there are specific challenges to the creation of content on these topics, interviews with a few selected long-time contributors and administrators were conducted, with an emphasis on aspects such as sourcing Punjabi language material, finding references, digitization, tagging etc. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The objective of this study was also to understand where these conversations (undertaken as part of the study) may offer strategies to address knowledge gaps in specific areas of work. Questions were prepared and a total of five interviews of Punjabi Wiki community members were conducted. The people interviewed were chosen on the basis of their involvement and experience of working in the community.</p>
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
<h3><strong>Observations and Analysis </strong></h3>
<p dir="ltr">There are an estimated 33 million Eastern Punjabi speakers in the world,[2] and it is a widely spoken language in India especially in Punjab state. Over 70% people have access to the internet in Punjab on the phone.[3] The main objective of this study was to understand the nature of existing content on Punjabi Wikipedia, and various challenges in content creation, coverage of topics and quality. The following were some of the main observations and learnings from the study.: </p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Challenges with Lack of Existing Content</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">The conversations with selected Wikimedia contributors and users offered an insight into what Punjabi readers and online contributors think about the content available on the internet in Punjabi language, and how Punjabi Wikipedia is impactful in this scenario, especially in addressing any gaps in this area. It was found during discussions with interviewees that there are less number of Punjabi language websites in the field of language, literature, politics, and general knowledge. Most of the websites are in English language. <a href="https://punjabipedia.org/">PunjabiPedia</a> and Punjabi Wikipedia are encyclopedic websites which are providing knowledge in Gurmukhi script. Apart from this, websites like <a href="https://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Main_Page">SikhiWiki</a> are providing knowledge in the Roman script and Punjabi newspaper websites are providing their news updates in Gurmukhi script. So, Punjabi Wikipedia is one of the few available sites that offers information on a variety of topics in the local language. As a result, it may have a good viewership, but at the same time, there is also the additional problem of not having good or reliable online sources or references.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Another important point mentioned by people interviewed was that while there are 30,000+ articles on Punjabi Wikipedia and they are categorised across different topics, there is a lack of content about Punjab itself. It was suggested that, therefore, this should be an area of priority for the community to work on. Even the most viewed articles of Punjabi Wikipedia do not meet the <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%B5%E0%A8%BF%E0%A8%95%E0%A9%80%E0%A8%AA%E0%A9%80%E0%A8%A1%E0%A9%80%E0%A8%86:%E0%A8%9A%E0%A9%B0%E0%A8%97%E0%A9%87_%E0%A8%B2%E0%A9%87%E0%A8%96%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%82_%E0%A8%A6%E0%A9%87_%E0%A8%AA%E0%A9%88%E0%A8%AE%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%A8%E0%A9%87">good article criteria</a> of Wikipedia. For example, the article of <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%B9%E0%A8%B0%E0%A8%BF%E0%A8%AE%E0%A9%B0%E0%A8%A6%E0%A8%B0_%E0%A8%B8%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%B9%E0%A8%BF%E0%A8%AC">Harmandir Sahib</a> on Punjabi Wikipedia has not been written according to good article criteria, as it too has no category and it is without proper sections.[4] There are not many references in most of the important articles. Another example is the article of the tenth Sikh Guru, <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%97%E0%A9%81%E0%A8%B0%E0%A9%82_%E0%A8%97%E0%A9%8B%E0%A8%AC%E0%A8%BF%E0%A9%B0%E0%A8%A6_%E0%A8%B8%E0%A8%BF%E0%A9%B0%E0%A8%98#%E0%A8%B9%E0%A8%B5%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%B2%E0%A9%87">Guru Gobind Singh</a>, which has only 2 references.[5] Apart from this, articles about cities and villages of Punjab are mostly stub articles. The total number of villages in Punjab is about twelve thousand and a good number of the <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%B8%E0%A8%BC%E0%A9%8D%E0%A8%B0%E0%A9%87%E0%A8%A3%E0%A9%80:%E0%A8%AA%E0%A9%B0%E0%A8%9C%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%AC_(%E0%A8%AD%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%B0%E0%A8%A4)_%E0%A8%A6%E0%A9%87_%E0%A8%B8%E0%A8%BC%E0%A8%B9%E0%A8%BF%E0%A8%B0_%E0%A8%85%E0%A8%A4%E0%A9%87_%E0%A8%AA%E0%A8%BF%E0%A9%B0%E0%A8%A1">articles about these villages</a> are available on Punjabi Wikipedia. They are too small and the need is to expand those articles. There are about 7,000+ articles in the <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%B8%E0%A8%BC%E0%A9%8D%E0%A8%B0%E0%A9%87%E0%A8%A3%E0%A9%80:%E0%A8%AE%E0%A9%81%E0%A9%B1%E0%A8%A2">stub category</a>. So, such articles therefore need more work and improvement in terms of quality.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Methods of Creating New Content</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Most of the content on Punjabi Wikipedia is about other countries or regions apart from Punjab or India. One of the reasons for this is that most of the editors are doing content translation, from existing content on English or other regional language Wikipedias into Punjabi Wikipedia. In order to fill the content gap about Punjab there should be content creation specifically on topics related to the state. <a href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation">Content translation tools</a>, while helpful, have also contributed to the fact that people prefer translation and they use <a href="https://translate.google.co.in/">Google Translate</a> in the content tool. The tool itself is accurate and works fine with Punjabi, but the issue is that most of the people are doing only translation, as it is the easiest way to contribute. Apart from the above, it was also noted by the interviewees that editathons about other countries or cultures, while useful, are not beneficial in the immediate context. Nitesh Gill [6] observes that there should be more discussion among the community members about upcoming events or editathons. She says: “Sometimes two or more events are going on in the same time period and the same contributors take part in those activities. It should be better that with cooperation we can have one event at one time. We will grow in a better way if we do something about this.” </p>
<p dir="ltr">There is less viewership of those articles which are related to other countries or cultures apart from India, for example the article of <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%95%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%82%E0%A8%B8%E0%A8%9F%E0%A9%88%E0%A8%82%E0%A8%9F%E0%A9%80%E0%A8%A8_%E0%A8%AA%E0%A9%80%E0%A8%9F%E0%A8%B0_%E0%A8%95%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%B5%E0%A9%87%E0%A8%AB%E0%A9%80">Constantine Peter Cavafy</a>. But articles of importance from the perspective of region and culture are not edited for a long time, such as the article about Punjabi storywriter <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%AE%E0%A8%A8%E0%A8%BF%E0%A9%B0%E0%A8%A6%E0%A8%B0_%E0%A8%95%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%82%E0%A8%97">Maninder Kang</a>, which is smaller than the article of Constantine Peter Cavafy. For example, Stalinjeet Brar [7] notes that: “The article of former chief minister of Punjab, <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%AA%E0%A8%B0%E0%A8%95%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%B8%E0%A8%BC_%E0%A8%B8%E0%A8%BF%E0%A9%B0%E0%A8%98_%E0%A8%AC%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%A6%E0%A8%B2">Prakash Singh Badal</a> on Punjabi Wikipedia is a relevant article. He is a remarkable personality of Punjab in the history of politics. He left his position in 2017 but the article still shows that he is chief minister of Punjab. This is our major mistake. We have to work on this aspect.” [8] He also added that the statistics of cricketers like Virat Kohli, are not updated. In this regard, we can integrate Wikidata with Wikipedia articles so one change on Wikidata can provide automatically updated data on Punjabi articles. </p>
<p dir="ltr">He also added that an assessment of existing events and initiatives, such as <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Growing_Local_Language_Content_on_Wikipedia_(Project_Tiger_2.0)">Project Tiger</a> would be useful to understand the challenges and opportunities for content creation on Indian language Wikipedias The <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Project_Tiger_Editathon_2018">first Project Tiger editathon</a> happened from 1 March to 31 May 2018 and the second Project Tiger event was organised from 10 October 2019 to 11 January 2020, which was named “<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Growing_Local_Language_Content_on_Wikipedia_(Project_Tiger_2.0)">Project Tiger 2.0</a>”. Project Tiger coordinators can assess the number of views of those articles which were created during the event and therefore arrive at a potential strategy for our target audience. It is therefore useful to undertake such an analysis and evaluation at the end of big events.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Strategies for New Content Creation</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"> It was observed that to fill this content gap about Punjab and its culture on Punjabi Wikipedia, the community needs to approach this topic accordingly. It was suggested by every interviewee that we have to organise an editathon to edit top viewed articles. To maintain continuity in this approach, community members should cooperate with each other. Charan Gill [9] noted that we should engage students and professors in different subjects to collaborate and work on these areas with editors. This will be helpful in producing good quality articles. The community needs to engage experts from different areas or fields. Manavpreet Kaur [10] suggests that we should focus on good article criteria when we go to a college or institution to teach students how to edit Wikipedia. For example, she notes that there were very few articles about forensic science when she joined Punjabi Wikipedia and existing content was two or three line articles. She tried to fill this gap and as a professor of forensic science, she engaged her students to edit Wikipedia content related to forensic science. So, we can have this kind of approach to fill the content gap on Punjabi Wikipedia. We should encourage colleges in Punjab and teachers to participate in this free knowledge movement. Wikimedia projects are platforms for Punjabi language community to provide knowledge in their own language. Manavpreet and Nitesh also note that there are less number of women participants in this movement. To fill the gender gap we should also focus on engaging women contributors. According to Manav, the <a href="https://wikidata-game.toolforge.org/distributed/#">Wikidata Game</a> was interesting for her, and noted that especially for new editors these types of games and editing techniques are so valuable in order to engage the younger generations of editors with this movement.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Hardarshan [11] shared his view that to engage the new generation with Punjabi Wikipedia or the broader free knowledge movement we should also work on basic articles related to the technological world. For example, articles on computers and other devices , mobile games etc. He also notes that while Punjabi Wikipedia has articles on advanced topics, most of them are translated, and not new content. But it does not have basic articles of good quality to offer an appropriate understanding of the topic. There is also a problem of translating technical vocabulary into the Punjabi language, which can be addressed by engaging experts and scholars as part of editathons and other initiatives for content creation . This way, the energy and interests of volunteers may also be harnessed with the right methods. Key members from the community can assign articles to newcomers, so that will help in further content creation. Nitesh shared her observation that “I was a beginner type volunteer at one time and later on with experience I have organised various events within my community. So, we should encourage our team members or volunteers. They can be good organisers or leaders of this movement.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">To engage students, there should be more syllabus oriented content on Punjabi Wikipedia. To bring a change in the structure, Stalinjeet suggested that we should not blindly follow policies of other languages like English and French or policies of the Wikimedia Foundation in India. We need to rethink these policies in the context of the needs of the local languages. Prioritization of editathons is also necessary, including coordination and working collaboratively on when to participate in which event. </p>
<p dir="ltr">In addition to the above, it has been noticed that it is difficult for communities with a small number of members to contribute collaboratively, so it is imperative to slowly increase the number of contributors as well. There are various Wikimedia projects that volunteers can join or they can contribute to any project according to their interest. They are not limited only to Punjabi Wikipedia. A good number of people are also active on Punjabi Wikisource as well. The need of the hour therefore, is to engage new people with Wikipedia or with this movement to make good changes to the modes of access to knowledge in Indian languages. Experienced Wikimedians should share their learnings, apart from training that is required for advanced editing.</p>
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
<h3><strong>Conclusion</strong></h3>
<p>As illustrated by observations above, content creation on (Eastern) Punjabi Wikipedia faces a specific set of challenges. The people interviewed as part of this study have offered various suggestions on what can be done to address these limitations, and improve the quality of content. . Punjabi Wikipedia is an important source of information and knowledge for Punjabi internet readers due to the lack of websites providing content in the language. So, the responsibility of its reliability to provide such content in a sustainable manner is even greater. Work on creating more content on these platforms needs to be undertaken after understanding the response and ways of engagement of the readers. People today want to read less and learn more. Punjabi Wikipedia articles therefore need to be informative and include as many references as possible. A crucial gap here is also the lack of information on how to contribute to Punjabi Wikipedia in a productive and easy way. Good documentation of help pages and more frequent training would help in addressing this shortcoming as well. </p>
<p>In conclusion, the main strategy to address these knowledge gaps, as illustrated by the learnings from this study, is that we should update existing articles on Punjabi Wikipedia at priority, with a focus on expanding top viewed stub articles. A focus on quality of content is therefore more important than quantity. In addition to this, knowledge-sharing by experienced Wikipedians, diverse modes of training and engaging new contributors, and working on strategies for sustainable content creation would go a long way in addressing the content gaps on Punjabi Wikipedia. </p>
<p>Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Content_Creation_on_Eastern_Punjabi_Wikipedia">here.</a></p>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<h3><strong>References:</strong></h3>
<p>[1] Statistics as of 09 February 2020, 05:32 PM</p>
<p>[2] “Punjabi, Eastern,” Ethnologue, accessed February 9, 2021, https://www.ethnologue.com/language/pan.</p>
<p>[3] Roy, C. Vijay. “In Punjab, over 70% people access the internet on the phone” The Tribune India, May 2, 2019. <a href="https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/business/in-punjab-over-70-people-access-internet-on-phone-766809">https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/business/in-punjab-over-70-people-access-internet-on-phone-766809</a>. Accessed February 9, 2021. </p>
<p>[4] As of 04 March 2021 09:59 AM</p>
<p>[5] As of 04 March 2021 09:59 AM</p>
<p>[6] She is a research scholar from Moga, Punjab and pursuing her Ph.D from University of Delhi in Punjabi literature. She has been contributing on Punjabi Wikipedia from 2015. Her remarkable contribution on Punjabi Wikipedia is that she has completed 1000WikiDays challenge, which means one article every day. See: <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%B5%E0%A8%B0%E0%A8%A4%E0%A9%8B%E0%A8%82%E0%A8%95%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%B0:Nitesh_Gill">https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ:Nitesh_Gill</a></p>
<div>[7] Stalinjeet Brar is from Faridkot and has been contributing on Wikimedia projects since August 2014. He is doing his Ph.D in Punjabi language and his research topic is also a comparative study of Punjabi Wikipedia and PunjabiPedia. See: <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%B5%E0%A8%B0%E0%A8%A4%E0%A9%8B%E0%A8%82%E0%A8%95%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%B0:Stalinjeet_Brar">https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ:Stalinjeet_Brar</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div>[8] As of 04 March 2021, 09:59 AM</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[9] Charan Gill is an experienced volunteer, aged 76 years old. He has been contributing on Wikimedia projects since 2008 He is the top contributor from Punjabi Wiki Community with more than 59,000 edits on Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia.. See: <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%B5%E0%A8%B0%E0%A8%A4%E0%A9%8B%E0%A8%82%E0%A8%95%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%B0:Charan_Gill">https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ:Charan_Gill</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div>[10] Manavpreet Kaur is from Forensic science field and completed her Phd in the same subject also. She engaged with Punjabi Wikipedia in 2014 and also as a volunteer she has completed 100WikiDays challenge and has done various forms of outreach for the community. See: <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%B5%E0%A8%B0%E0%A8%A4%E0%A9%8B%E0%A8%82%E0%A8%95%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%B0:Manavpreet_Kaur">https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ:Manavpreet_Kaur</a></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-2df5cc03-7fff-1042-a230-869aa88a5aed">
<div> </div>
[11] </span><span id="docs-internal-guid-7a568b89-7fff-2cd8-bd10-780511dc45f6">As a student of secondary school, Benipal hardarshan is one of the youngest Wikimedians from Punjabi Wiki community. He made his first edit in 2014 but is actively contributing from 2016. He is an active administrator on Punjabi WIkisource.. See: <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%B5%E0%A8%B0%E0%A8%A4%E0%A9%8B%E0%A8%82%E0%A8%95%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%B0:Benipal_hardarshan">https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ:Benipal_hardarshan</a></span>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/content-creation-on-eastern-punjabi-wikipedia'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/content-creation-on-eastern-punjabi-wikipedia</a>
</p>
No publisherSatpal SinghA2K ResearchAccess to Knowledge2021-05-15T12:24:21ZBlog EntryCommemorating Ulo Senthamizh Kodai (1945 - 2024): A Luminary of Tamil Open Knowledge Movement
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/commemorating-ulo-senthamizh-kodai-1945-2024-a-luminary-of-tamil-open-knowledge-movement
<b>பயன்தூக்கார் செய்த உதவி நயன்தூக்கின்
நன்மை கடலின் பெரிது. (௱௩ - 103)
திருவள்ளுவர் (Payandhookkaar Seydha Udhavi Nayandhookkin
Nanmai Katalin Peridhu (Transliteration). The contribution made without weighing the return, When weighed, outweighs the sea.
- Thiruvalluvar</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of Ulo Senthamizh Kodai (December 22, 1945 – February 1, 2024), a distinguished technologist, author, academician, and prolific contributor to the Tamil Wikipedia community.[1] Born on December 22, 1945, in the village of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiruvallur_district" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Puducherrypalli</a> in Thiruvallur district, Tamil Nadu, India, He devoted his life to engineering, science, and promoting scientific knowledge in Tamil.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Ulo Senthamizh Kodai earned his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_of_Engineering,_Guindy" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Guindy Engineering College</a> and a Master's degree from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSG_College_of_Technology" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">PSG College of Technology</a> in Coimbatore. His illustrious 33-year career at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNEB" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tamil Nadu Electricity Board</a> included earning a Ph.D. He authored the acclaimed book "<a href="https://www.noolulagam.com/tamil-book/1188/makkal-ariviyal-ilakiyam-nokkum-pokkum-book-type-ilakiyam/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Makkal Ariviyal Ilakkiyam: Nokkum Pokkum</a>" and received the Tamil Nadu Government's award for best book in engineering and technology in 2007.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Passionate about Tamil Nadu's science and technology history, Ulo Senthamizh Kodai contributed extensively to scientific vocabulary in Tamil. He served on the editorial board of the <a href="http://www.aubit.edu.in/library/Journals_magazines.html" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Bharathidasan University Journal of Science and Technology</a> and significantly contributed to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Virtual_Academy" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tamil Virtual Academy</a>'s glossary of technical terms.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In addition to academia, He was a luminary in the Tamil Wikipedia community, starting his contributions in 2014. He created over 2000 articles and had an edit count of 28513 in <a href="https://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%AE%E0%AF%81%E0%AE%A4%E0%AE%B1%E0%AF%8D_%E0%AE%AA%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%E0%AE%AE%E0%AF%8D" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tamil Wikipedia</a>, focusing mainly on scientific articles. He was actively involved until his final days, participating in discussions and editing articles until January 29, 2024.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Ulo Senthamizh Kodai leaves behind a legacy continued by his son Vanchi. His impact on Tamil science and the Wikipedia community is immeasurable, with notable contributions to projects like the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/100wikidays" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">100 WikiDays</a> and the Tamil Teachers' Articles Cleanup Drive.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Members of the Tamil Wikipedia community mourn his passing. Fellow Wikipedian Mahalingam noted, "The passing of Ulo Senthamizh Kodai is a great loss to us all." Former colleague Jambulingam remembered his dedication and encouragement, while longtime contributor K. Murthy recalled Ulo Senthamizh Kodai's resilience despite physical challenges.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Ulo Senthamizh Kodai's contributions were recognized with accolades, including featuring on the main page of Tamil Wikipedia in 2016 and various barnstars and medals from fellow Wikipedians.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As we bid farewell to Ulo Senthamizh Kodai, we remember him not only for his significant contributions to Tamil science and Wikipedia but also for his unwavering dedication to knowledge, education, and the Tamil language. His passing leaves a void in the community, and he will be dearly missed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We are planning to host a condolence meeting online and we will soon provide information about that. We encourage people to share their memories/experiences of their association with Ulo Senthamizh Kodai on this thread.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Tamil Wikimedians & CIS-A2K.</p>
<p dir="ltr">[1] <a href="https://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%89%E0%AE%B2%E0%AF%8B._%E0%AE%9A%E0%AF%86%E0%AE%A8%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%A4%E0%AE%AE%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%B4%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8B%E0%AE%A4%E0%AF%88" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Biographical Article about Ulo Senthamizh Kodai</a> in Tamil Wikipedia</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify; ">[2] <a href="https://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%AA%E0%AE%AF%E0%AE%A9%E0%AE%B0%E0%AF%8D:%E0%AE%89%E0%AE%B2%E0%AF%8B.%E0%AE%9A%E0%AF%86%E0%AE%A8%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%A4%E0%AE%AE%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%B4%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8B%E0%AE%A4%E0%AF%88" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Userpage of Ulo Senthamizh Kodai</a> in Tamil Wikipedia</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/commemorating-ulo-senthamizh-kodai-1945-2024-a-luminary-of-tamil-open-knowledge-movement'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/commemorating-ulo-senthamizh-kodai-1945-2024-a-luminary-of-tamil-open-knowledge-movement</a>
</p>
No publisherpavanA2K ResearchWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2024-02-08T14:59:50ZBlog EntryBridging the Gender Gap: A Report on Indian Language Wikimedia Communities
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/bridging-the-gender-gap-in-indian-language-wikimedia-communities
<b>This research study documents the gender gap and bias in Indian language Wikimedia projects and communities, with a focus on participation by and content related to women contributors across diverse Wikimedia platforms. The research was undertaken by Bhuvana Meenakshi Koteeswaran, with editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and additional inputs from Ambika Tandon and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>The full report can be read <a href="https://cis-india.org/A2K_BGG_Report_2021" class="external-link">here.</a></h4>
<h4>Also read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Bridging_the_Gender_gap:_A_report_on_Indian_Language_Wikimedia_Communities">here</a>.</h4>
<hr />
<p>This research project is a study of how various language communities in India perceive the gender gap in their own contexts, and how the understanding of this subject has varied over time. Wikimedia characterises ‘gender bias’ on its platforms as the fact “that Wikipedia contributors are mostly male, the fact that relatively few biographies on Wikipedia are about women, and the concept that topics of interest to women are less well-covered.”[1] Studies done over the last several years have shown that ‘this gender gap’ results in not only a lesser number of women participants in Wikimedia events or number of edits by women, but also a range of such disparities in the active participation of men and women on various aspects of Wikimedia projects.These gaps vary depending on socio-cultural factors within diverse language communities, such as access to internet and digital technologies and public spaces by women, skill-building and training, labour and time available for voluntary work and development of friendly and accessible working environments.</p>
<h3>Context and Methods</h3>
<p>Previous research by Ting-Yi Chang (2018) and Eva Jadine Lannon (2013) undertaken with CIS-A2K indicate the existence of these disparities and knowledge gaps in Indian language Wikimedia communities, and emphasise that it is imperative to focus on not only representation but also quality of contributions on Wikimedia by individuals across the spectrum of gender and sexual identities. The research also offers incentives, possible outcomes and sustainable strategies needed to address this issue. In the last few years a lot more work has emerged on this issue in various language communities globally, and in India. Several Indian language communities have started to explore the need for focusing on gender gap and community health initiatives in their own contexts. Observations from these initiatives further reiterate that this gap continues to exist and there is a need to study and better understand the reasons for its prevalence.</p>
<p>As part of this study, we interviewed 15 women respondents across 13 different Indian language Wikimedia communities (including English) who contribute to several Wikimedia projects, and conducted 2 Focus Group Discussions(FGDs). The FGDs were conducted with women students from two different arts and science colleges in Tamil Nadu. The interviews and FGDs primarily helped us understand their perceptions about gender gap, the challenges that they and/or their communities experience in terms of gender bias and also the interesting initiatives set up to address these problems, both in terms of content and participation.</p>
<h3>Key Research Areas</h3>
<p>The research focussed on three main thematic areas, namely:</p>
<p><strong>Developing a better understanding of online participation - in terms of content created by women, content about women, and online engagement with communities.</strong></p>
<p>As most of the engagement with Wikimedia projects is an online activity so an analysis of the accessibility of internet and other digital infrastructures, platforms and participation guidelines were discussed. Improvements on providing support and training to access platforms would help in furthering participation to contribute to Wikimedia projects and initiatives. Restrictions on offline meetings due to the COVID 19 pandemic has further spurred a lot of online meetings and engagement. Awareness and training on the use of virtual platforms along with friendly space policies could help in creating a structured online experience on Wikimedia for the women in the community.</p>
<p><strong>Developing a better understanding of women’s offline community participation.</strong></p>
<p>Offline participation by women contributors in Indian language Wikimedia communities is an ideal space for learning new skills, working on collaborative events like edit-a-thons or a general discussion among the members of the community. Preference for independent events, discussions such as women-only forums led by women leaders/mentors were suggested by the interviewees. The difficulty of managing voluntary work with professional and domestic responsibilities, and need for support with travel and participation in offline events are some of the challenges highlighted from the interviews.</p>
<p><strong>Enhancing sustained participation of women contributors - identifying challenges with retention, infrastructural issues etc, and possibilities and strategies to address the same, and creating awareness on how women can be involved with all Wikimedia projects.</strong></p>
<p>We tried to understand what are impediments to sustaining Wikimedia contributions by and about women, and possible strategies to address the same. These include the need to encourage more efforts in areas such as detailed documentation of metrics on gender and diversity, building more awareness within communities about gender gap/bias and building relevant technological and communication skills, and addressing community health and conflict management as an important area of work and engagement.</p>
<h3>Learnings</h3>
<p>The learnings from the study offered insights into several key aspects of the problem of gender gap on Wikimedia, such as the need to encourage sustainable contributions through multiple strategies addressing challenges faced by women and other marginalised groups engaging with Wikimedia projects. This includes efforts to build awareness about gender gap and bias in Indian language communities, undertaking training to address technological and communication gaps and skills, understanding and accommodating the different demands that women editors have on their time and labour with respect to professional, domestic and care work, and according more visibility and recognition towards their efforts on Wikimedia. In addition to this, recognising and actively working towards addressing systemic power asymmetries in online platforms, by creating friendly working environments and encouraging women participants to take ownership and lead initiatives would be imperative to foster long-term and productive engagement with Wikimedia. Based on these observations, the report also offers a set of recommendations, which may also inform existing and emerging efforts to address the problem of gender bias and gender gap on Wikimedia platforms.</p>
<h3>References</h3>
<p>[1] “Gender Bias on Wikipedia”, Wikipedia, accessed November 29, 2020. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia&oldid=991093125">https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia&oldid=991093125</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/bridging-the-gender-gap-in-indian-language-wikimedia-communities'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/bridging-the-gender-gap-in-indian-language-wikimedia-communities</a>
</p>
No publisherbhuvanaA2K ResearchAccess to Knowledge2021-05-15T12:26:52ZBlog EntryA Comparative Study of Article Creation Campaigns on Wikipedia - Part I
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/a-comparative-study-of-wikimedia-article-creation-campaigns-in-india
<b>This is a short report on a comparative analysis of two prominent Wikimedia initiatives, Wikipedia Asian Month and Project Tiger, to understand prevailing challenges and opportunities, and strategies to address the same. The report has been authored by Nitesh Gill with inputs from Suswetha Kolluru, and editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019–2020.
</b>
<h3><span id="docs-internal-guid-69ace56f-7fff-2f69-bdd5-6fd28bf1e69c"></span></h3>
<h3><br /></h3>
<h3>Introduction </h3>
<div>
<p dir="ltr">The motive of the Wikimedia movement is to aid growth and access to free knowledge across the world. Over the last several years, apart from the online encyclopedia, Wikimedia has also developed and supported many projects, campaigns, events or edit-a-thons simultaneously on its <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Complete_list_of_Wikimedia_projects">various sister projects</a> such as Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Wikisource and others. Campaigns and contests such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art%2BFeminism">Art & Feminism</a> (2014), <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red">Women in Red</a> (2015), <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments">Wiki Loves Monuments</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Butterfly">Wiki loves Butterfly</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Asian_Month">Wikipedia Asian Month</a> (2015), <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library/1Lib1Ref">#1Lib1Ref</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Project_Tiger_Writing_Contest">Project Tiger</a> (2018) etc. play a crucial role in motivating communities to create new content while working together in an organized manner. </p>
</div>
<p> The objective of this study is to undertake a comparative analysis of two projects/article creation campaigns on Wikipedia, which are <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Asian_Month">Wikipedia Asian Month</a> (WAM) and Project Tiger. They are both primarily online writing contests. WAM has been organised every year in November since 2015. It is an international edit-a-thon. Project Tiger is a contest which is organised in India. Several Indian language communities take part in this actively. The first iteration of Project Tiger was organized in 2018 and two iterations have taken place till date. While different in terms of the region or area of focus, both campaigns have a common goal of content creation in regional languages. The Indian Wikipedia communities’ contributions are extensive in both projects. It would be interesting to learn from both of them and also understand what works and what needs to be improved in the future.</p>
<div>
<br />
<h3>Research Questions</h3>
<p dir="ltr">As suggested by the title, the aim of this study is primarily to better understand the motivation behind long-term edit-a-thons with the help of WAM and PT. Through a comparative analysis, it will attempt to understand the participants' perspective on contributing to these types of projects, prevailing challenges and opportunities, and the knowledge gaps in content creation as well as in participation.</p>
<br />
<p dir="ltr">The objectives of this study are to :</p>
<ul><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Understand the key motivations for volunteers to contribute to article creation campaigns/contests. </p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Outline the unique aspects of Wikipedia Asian Month and Project Tiger for content creation on Wikipedia, challenges and opportunities and ways to build on the same. </p>
</li></ul>
<h2 dir="ltr"><br /></h2>
<h3>Background </h3>
<p dir="ltr">The objective of the Wikimedia movement is to facilitate the growth of free knowledge, through its various projects and platforms. Before starting Wikipedia, in 2000 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Nupedia">Nupedia</a> was launched and on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#:~:text=Wikipedia%20was%20launched%20on%20January,other%20languages%20were%20quickly%20developed.">15 January 2001</a> Wikipedia was set up as a free encyclopedia. All the Wikimedia projects such as <a>Wikidata</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a href="https://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a>, <a href="https://wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikisource</a>, <a href="https://www.wiktionary.org/">Wiktionary</a>, etc. are central knowledge hubs. These are the platforms where knowledge from around the world can be found but this means it also requires participation from an active volunteer community across numerous languages. There are many ways to contribute to these platforms as a volunteer. One way is participating in an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_run_an_edit-a-thon">edit-a-thon</a>, where several volunteers can actively work together on the same platform. Edit-a-thons started just after a few years of Wikipedia’s existence. In the beginning, the main objective of the edit-a-thons was content creation; this remains the primary objective, although now they also focus on expanding/adding to existing content, thus contributing towards increasing the number of articles on Wikipedia. A prominent feature of these types of events is the interaction among experienced and new editors. The edit-a-thons can happen online as well as at physical, offline locations. In September 2004, Jimmy Wales proposed the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editing_Weekend">Editing weekends</a>’ concept which was a starting point of edit-a-thons. He started a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_Weekend">discussion</a> about spending the holidays in a common space where editors could edit or learn about Wikipedia. The event itself was not very prominent but managed to start discussions about similar events among volunteers. A few years later, in March 2009 in Sydney, the first GLAM edit-a-thon was organised at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/Powerhouse_Museum_2009-03-13">Powerhouse Museum</a>. According to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">English Wikipedia</a>, in 2011, an edit-a-thon was organized on cultural partnerships, mainly with the <a href="https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Editathon,_British_Library/January_2011">British Library</a>, with a second series taking place later that same year. After that, it became a popular event among volunteers and every community started to organize these types of events. Gradually, Wikimedians also thought about more such campaigns in the form of edit-a-thons; these events were successful and helped achieve the stated agenda of content creation on Wikipedia. In 2013, a research study was conducted about the edit-a-thon as part of the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Learning_and_Evaluation/Evaluation_reports/2013/Edit-a-thons#Program_basics_and_history">Wikimedia Programme Evaluation</a> report, which noted its history, statistics, budget, inputs, resources and outputs etc. But so far little research has been done on particular edit-a-thons such as Wikipedia Asian Month and Project Tiger and their impact on the growth of content on Wikipedia. </p>
<br />
<h3>Wikipedia Asian Month</h3>
<p dir="ltr">Wikipedia Asian Month is a long-duration edit-a-thon structured around specific topics. The discussion about this edit-a-thon started in 2015 during <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_project_domain">Wikimania</a>. A separate meeting was held for all the Asian language communities where the WAM proposal was presented by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AddisWang">User:Addis Wang</a>, and endorsed by all members present. Before WAM, similar events were already being conducted but this was the first attempt to establish collaboration on a broader level with the Asian language communities. Also before this project, local Wikipedias had only a little content regarding Asia.</p>
<br />
<p dir="ltr">The aim of this project was to create more content related to Asia on the regional Wikipedias, with a focus only on new content. Diversification of content, collaboration and cultural exchange are the main objectives of the project. Small incentives like receiving <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Postcards_in_Wikipedia_Asian_Month#/media/File:Wikipedia_Asian_Month_-_Written_Postcards_at_Wikimedia_Taiwan_-_1.jpg">postcards</a> from countries that participants added content about were introduced to encourage more participation. Postcards and the badge of ‘Wikipedia Brand Ambassador’ were added to motivate the contributors. The Wikipedia Asian Month took initiative to encourage and expand participants and communities. As a member from the Punjabi community, Gaurav, notes, “Wikipedia Asian Month was a boost for the communities or Wikipedians. The prize was just a postcard, although this prize gave positive energy to participants and they created articles just for getting appreciation.” In the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Asian_Month_2015">first iteration</a>, there were around 42 participating communities out of which 11 were Indian language communities. After the first iteration of WAM, when asked about Indian language communities' participation in 2015, <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/wikipedia-asian-month-2014-2016-iteration-starts-on-1-november">Addis Wang replied</a>, “Yes! As one of the largest Wikimedia communities in Asia, and maybe the most diverse community in the world, the Indic community is highly involved in the Wikipedia Asian Month since the idea was proposed during Wikimania 2015. In last year’s edition, India is the country that received the most postcards sent by Wikipedia Asian Month. Also, Wikipedian Asian Ambassadors of English Wikipedia, who created most articles during the Asian Month, are from India.” As noted in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Asian_Month/2019#:~:text=Wikipedia%20Asian%20Month%20is%20an,on%20various%20language%2Dspecific%20Wikipedias.&text=The%20first%20iteration%20of%20this,participants%20have%20diversified%20and%20expanded.">2019 by the campaign coordinators</a> , “In the past three years, over 20,500 high-quality articles have been added in more than 50 language-specific Wikipedias by more than 2,000 Wikipedia editors”, (excluding 2019). In 2020, WAM also happened in the same month, November, just like every year. </p>
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<h3>Project Tiger </h3>
<p>Some years ago Google initiated efforts to<a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Reach/Announcements/Project_Glow_FAQ"> bridge a gap in Indian language content online</a> . They partnered with the Wikimedia Foundation who in turn collaborated with CIS-A2K and started a pilot project named Project Tiger, in 2018. Also called <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Supporting_Indian_Language_Wikipedias_Program">Supporting Indian language Wikipedias </a>in 2018, Project Tiger did well and received good participation from all the communities, which led to its second iteration in 2019. Project Tiger is a unique and recent initiative that is aimed at creating locally relevant content on Indic Wikipedias that is most searched for by users online. It is distinct from other contests because it is one of the longest running Wiki edit-a-thons, considering it runs for over 3 months with several Indic communities competing with each other. It is an online writing contest which is organised in India. Several Indian language communities take part in this actively. The project is conducted in two phases i.e, the contest includes hardware support distribution to promising volunteers and a 3-month online writing contest on Indian language Wikipedias.The first phase of the contest is the distribution of hardware support, through which 50 Laptops by Google and internet stipends are offered to 100 experienced and promising Wikimedians, who need infrastructure support to increase contributions on Wikipedia. Once the distribution is done, communities start creating articles from the list of topics provided by Google. Other than the list, the community is encouraged to come up with their own set of articles that is relevant to Wikipedia in their own language. Project Tiger, as the name suggests, is inspired by, and named after, an environmental project in India to <a class="external-link" href="https://ecolawgy.net/project-tiger-in-india-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-project-tiger/">save tigers.</a> Similarly, Wikipedia’s Project Tiger aims at nurturing locally relevant content on Indic language Wikipedias.</p>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Methods</h3>
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<p dir="ltr">The primary method for this study consisted of interviews with community members who participated in either of the projects or who knew about both. These interviews were conducted via phone calls as well as in written form via a questionnaire/survey. The observations from the study are descriptive and include direct quotations (with the permission) of the participant. Due to a shortage of time and availability of community members, only a limited number of interviews have been conducted for the study. These interviewees were selected primarily based on their active participation or their contributions in their regional language Wikipedia. The interviews were conducted with participants from Assamese, Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, Santali, Tamil language communities from India. These interviewees also include the main organizers of WAM. The <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fountain_tool">fountain tool</a> developer was also interviewed as part of the study because the tool is a common factor in both the projects. Questionnaires varied depending on the category of respondents, such as participants, contributors, local and international organisers, developer etc. A total of 17 interviews were conducted for both projects. 9 interviews were conducted with the WAM international team, local organisers and participants and 7 interviews with PT organisers and contributors, and one with the fountain tool developer. The interviews were conducted in English, Hindi, Punjabi and Telugu. A consent form was shared with all the interviewees, including permission for recording the interviews. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The data collection was followed by a comparative analysis of Wikipedia Asian Month and Project Tiger. These both are pilot contests which have some similarities, but also some unique aspects. We compared the objectives, scope, process, communication, communities, languages, content, and achievements of these two projects. Data for this was primarily collected through the interviews mentioned above, but also a review of the event pages, and a random sampling of <a href="https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A8%B5%E0%A8%B0%E0%A8%A4%E0%A9%8B%E0%A8%82%E0%A8%95%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%B0_%E0%A8%97%E0%A9%B1%E0%A8%B2-%E0%A8%AC%E0%A8%BE%E0%A8%A4:Nitesh_Gill#Invitation_from_Wikipedia_Asian_Month">talk pages</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Asian_Month">reports and statistics</a> on these projects available on Wikipedia. These two projects have similarities, differences as well as some limitations. This comparison would help in understanding the importance and need for these types of contests. The motive for the comparison is to better understand the strategies of both projects which focus on increasing the content in local languages. These learnings may inform the process of working on the next iteration of these projects. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/a-comparative-study-of-wikimedia-article-creation-campaigns-in-india-part-ii">Part II</a> of this post will look at some of the observations and learnings from this report. </p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/a-comparative-study-of-wikimedia-article-creation-campaigns-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/a-comparative-study-of-wikimedia-article-creation-campaigns-in-india</a>
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No publisherNitesh Gill and Suswetha KolluruA2K ResearchAccess to Knowledge2021-06-11T10:56:40ZBlog Entry