Dear Arun As you speak about African languages: Adama Samassékou is surely a good source, but he is difficult to reach (I don't have his e-mail, but maybe someone in UNECA has). There was also an IFLA-UNECA post-WSIS Workshop on Building of African Capacity to implement the Outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society in the sphere of Libraries and Access to Information and Knowledge. This took place in Addis end of March 2006. More info is at http://www.uneca.org/disd/events/2006/wsis-library/main.html and a short report at http://www.ifla.org/VII/s17/pubs/s17-WISIS-Report2006.pdf .
But we should not forget the Library of Alexandria, which could become a repository for Arabic books. I don't know if anyone has information on possible plans of the Bibilotheca Alexandrina regarding digitizing Arabic books? Best Charles Geiger Executive Director WSIS -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Subbiah Arunachalam Sent: samedi, 12. août 2006 06:58 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Digital Divide Network discussion group; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Jayaweera, Wijayananda; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; M.Anandakrishnan; Anand Parthasarathy; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; sundar sarukkai; pramod mangla; Alexander Macgillivray; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Vijay Baskar; Heather Ford; 'Puvan J Selvanathan'; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; J Shankar; Dr. Arun K. Chakraborty; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Helen King; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Shaddy; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; T.V.Gopal; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Prof N. Balakrishnan; Rufina Fernandes (NASSCOM Foundation); [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Kalpana Dasgupta; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Heather Morrison; subir sen; Eskedar Nega Subject: [DDN] Digitizing Indian language books Dear Paola and friends: Thanks very much for your whole-hearted support to the idea of digitising books in different languages. I wrote about it to both Microsoft and Google. Ms Ankhi Das of Microsoft, New Delhi, replied stating that she had forwarded my suggestion to the right person (a Tamil speaker) in their Redmont office. I am yet to hear from Google. I have written to them more than once and I spoke to a senior Google official at the Second iCommons meet at Rio de Janeiro a few weeks ago. You say, "It would be good to have a parallel developments in character recognition technology, as I am not sure all languages have the equivalent browser compatibe format." The right persons to address these issues are two Indian friends of mine - both amazingly energetic and extraordinarily competent - S Ramani of HP labs in B'lore and Ramki (Ramakrishnan) of CDAC. I am sure they are members of one of these lists and will respond as soon as they see this message. I am also copying this to a professor at IIT Bombay and a professor at IIT Kanpur and officebearers of the Computer Society of India. Surely, corporations such as Google and Microsoft will also have people who can take care of these technical aspects. This morning I met a book publisher (Satya of New Horizon Media Pvrivate limited) over breakfast and he told me that among all Indian languages, Tamil is ahead in blogging and in digitizing books. Many Tamil classics (he cited the example of Silappathikaram) are already available in digital form. They may be in individual websites, and we may have to make them interoperable for universal open access. I read a few weeks ago about a Microsoft plan to digitize Hindi books. We may also persuade people like Mr Brewster Kahle of Internet Archive and Open Content Alliance to take interest in digitizing Indian language books. There are a number of individuals and institutions in Africa who might be keen on placing all books in African languages on open access repositories. I can name Prof. Adama Samosekou as a great champion of language computing. Best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 6:37 PM Subject: Re: [participants] [Fwd: [c3net] Digitizing Indian language books] > okay Fred > good idea > > - let's start to put the idea onto the wiki and make a list of > resources/possibilities > > and maybe someone (Arun?) would want to develop the idea (I'd love to > - but I am also swamped for the mo) > as soon as i have a spare yuga .... > > pdm > > > On 8/11/06, Frederick FN Noronha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Project Gutenberg could be a good place to pool initiatives. I >> understand they were interested in working on ancient Indian texts >> too... given the interest among Indologists worldwide. FN >> >> On 11/08/06, Jac SM Kee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> > >> > i wish i could paola! >> > >> > but at the moment, i'm afraid i dont have the resources to initiate >> > this. what i could do is connect you with arun, and maybe some >> > synchronicity might catalyse something :) >> > >> > jac >> > >> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> > >> > What a great idea >> > >> > I actually have some Tamil classics (with translations) on my coffe >> > table, and >> > of course Sanskrit, Pali, have some important original documents that >> > need to be made accessible and studied online >> > >> > Why don't you start a programme, and get in touch with relevant >> > institutions >> > in the respective countries to join in and get the ball rolling? >> > It would be good to have a parallel developments isn charachter >> > recognition >> > technology, as I am not sure all languages have the equivalent browser >> > compatibe format >> > >> > I am sure you can get lots of people interested, hopefully also UNESCO >> > as a world heritage >> > programme >> > I am in >> > >> > cheers >> > _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
