It is widely covered in vernacular press This is one among the english reports http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/digitising-contest-to-preserve-rare-books-in-malayalam/article5538126.ece
I think it may be relevant to share the context of this too . This may be helpful and useful for other wikisource communities. I am part of the Organizing Team and our organization , Swathanthra Malayalam Computing is one of the partners for this 1. Unlike Latin based languages , Most of the Indian languages does not have a functional OCR solution. So for us the digitalising means typing the pages and proofreading them . 2. Even though there are many state run institutions and libraries are engaged in scanning books for their digitization , The public domain works are not available in most cases . Initiatives like GLAM s not much suited for small librarys and state institutions. 3. In short the absence / Way to thank library for preserving books till they release under public domain with proper media attention becomes a difficult task . This program experimenting a way to thank Govt institution named Keral Sahithya academi via media attention for preserving and donating the public domain copies to many books to wikisource . 4.Wikisource can be used as a way of training new users to familiarize with mediawiki and wikisyntax . A Typing+proofreading competition with declared prizes anyway attracts more users and attention . within first 5 days 80+ new contributors and 798 pages added to Malayalam wikisource 5. We Succeeded in getting IT@School program of Govt of Kerala as an official partner and created a seperate competition for schools . So Students under the guidance of teachers can involve in Malayalam wikisource and get exposure for wikimedia projects 6. This helps in building more references for wikipedia articles . This is an important concern for many languages without much digital archives Thanks to Vishnu , Director of CIS-A2K for initially coming up with an idea of running a proofreading contest in malayalam wikipedia by offering some Devices . This helped us to start exploring the possibilities and expanding the program with more partners . In last October Malayalam wikisource community released a 2.0 version of its offline CD . This is the next major endeavour ~ regards Anivar Aravind User:AniVar On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 5:45 PM, Andrea Zanni <zanni.andre...@gmail.com>wrote: > That is an amazing news, Manoj, > good job! > > Also, think about writing a blog post for the Wikimedia blog: > they are always interested in hosting news a about Wikisources all around > the world. > > Aubrey > > > On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 7:13 PM, Jayanta Nath <jayanta...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Keep it up Manoj , it's a great initiatives. We shall try the same for >> Bengali wiki source . >> >> Jayanta >> >> On Thursday, January 2, 2014, manoj k wrote: >> >>> Dear friends, >>> >>> New year wishes to all. >>> >>> Wikisource project, a project of Wikimedia foundation is celebrating >>> its tenth anniversary. As a part of the decennary celebrations, the >>> Wikisource projects in various languages all over the world are conducting >>> competitions that enrich their contents including but not limited to >>> proof-reading and digitization. Being a part of it, Wikisource's >>> Malayalam version - Wiki Grandhasala community, a voluntary unit >>> engaged in collecting and digitizing valuable Malayalam books of >>> yesteryears, is organizing a digitization (Typing & Proofreading) >>> competition, along with various Government as well as >>> Non-Governmentestablishments and other voluntary organisations with similar >>> interestslike Kerala Sahithya Academy, IT@schoolProject, >>> Swathanthra Malayalam Computing and Center for Internet and Society >>> (CIS-A2K) under the banner of Malayalam Wiki community.. This >>> digitisation competition is being conducted as a part of an effort that >>> collects Malayalam Books whose copyright date has expired in digital form >>> (in unicode format) preserving the content and makig them more accessible >>> and popular. The competition lasts for a month, starting on January 1, 2014 >>> and ending on Jan 31, 2014. The competition focuses especiallyindividuals >>> and schools andincludes someattractive prizes including E-book readers, >>> Tablets and selected books for >>> those who lead the scoreboard. In this competition, books that was >>> recently released by Kerala Sahithya Academy to its public collection >>> will be digitised. >>> >>> Details of the competition;There are two specific competitions >>> >>> *Competition for individuals:-* >>> This competition is for the general public. It includes typing and >>> proofreading of selected books. The main aim is to attract people who >>> are active in social media into Wiki Grandhasala activities. Those who >>> wish to participate in this competition should register before January 31st >>> 2014. Here are the pages which are to be typed in as part of this >>> competition. >>> >>> *Competition for schools:-* >>> Presently many student groups, through the IT Cell of their respective >>> schools, participate actively in the Wiki Grandhasala effort. This >>> version of the competition aims to increase the participation of such >>> student groups. The idea is to inculcate more love for their mother tongue >>> among the students. The process also aims at providing awareness out >>> about such collaborative activities, getting them interested incomputer >>> related areas, specifically >>> Language Computing. Scanned copies of books that are in public domain >>> will be made available to the respective schools. Under the supervision >>> of IT@school coordinators of each school, students have to type themand >>> proof read,which will be added >>> to Wiki Grandhasala. >>> >>> The prizes (like E-book readers, Portable scanners) are sponsored by >>> Center for Internet and Society, Kerala Sahithya Academy and Swathanthra >>> Malayalam Computing. Also, certificates will be awarded to all students >>> who participate in the school level competition and IT@schoolcoordinators >>> , for their coordination activities. >>> >>> Those who wish to sponsor more prizes, and those who wish to >>> makescanned/hard copiesbooks in >>> the public domain availale to Wiki Grandhasala can contact >>> mlwikisou...@gmail.com. >>> >>> Project Page: https://ml.wikisource.org/wiki/WS:DC2014 >>> Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/265018530322640/ >>> Score Bord : http://balasankarc.in/ProofreadingContest/index.html >>> >>> For Malayalam Wikisource Community >>> >>> Manoj.K/മനോജ്.കെ >>> General Convener, Malayalam Wikisource Digitization Contest 2014 >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikisource-l mailing list >> wikisourc...@lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Wikisource-l mailing list > wikisourc...@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l > >
_______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
