Submissions/Malayalam Wikisource Digitization Contest

After careful consideration, the Programme Committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2014 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this August.

Submission no. 2025

Title of the submission: Experiences of Malayalam Wikisource Digitisation contest

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop): presentation

Author of the submission: Manoj K

E-mail address: manojkmohanme03107 at gmail dot com

Username: Manojk

Country of origin: India

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

Personal homepage or blog: www.manojkmohan.com

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

As a part of the tenth anniversary of Wikisource project celebrations, the Wikisource projects in various languages all over the world are conducting competitions that enrich their content. Most of the Indian languages do not have a functional OCR solution. Such projects need much manual effort unlike Latin languages. The Malayalam Wikisource community organized a digitization competition in association with various government as well as non-government establishments and other voluntary organisations with aligned goals, like Kerala Sahithya Academy, IT@ school Project, Swathanthra Malayalam Computing and Center for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K). This digitisation competition is being conducted as a part of an effort that collects uncopyrighted Malayalam books in digital form (in Unicode format), preserving their content and making them more accessible and popular.

The competition was conducted for two categories : Individuals and schools. The competition for individuals was open to the general public and included typing and proof reading of selected books. The main aim is to attract participation to Malayalam Wikisource.

Many student groups were already participating actively in digitization for Wikisource. The competition for schools aimed to increase the participation of student groups. The idea was to familiarize students with typing in Malayalam and get them introduced to historical Malayalam texts. We also aimed at creating awareness about collaborative activities, getting them interested in computing, specifically Language Computing. Scanned copies of books that are in public domain were made available to schools. Under the supervision of IT at school coordinators of each school, students typed and proof read them, which were added to Malayalam Wikisource.

After completing the one-month long event successfully, 12500+ Pages From 150 Books were typed via crowdsourcing. 234 Users Participated and 500+ School Students (from 140+ School's) are volunteered with offline Efforts.

More stats charts are in http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikisource/EN/ChartsWikipediaML.htm

Announcement mail http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikisource-l/2014-January/001743.html

Digitising contest to preserve rare books in Malayalam (The Hindu-04/01/2014)

>GLAM Projects Initiatives in Indian Context >Wikiproject Collaboration With Government agencies >Wikisource Can be use as Learning tool for New Users in Inputing the Language, MediaWiki Interface & wikisyntax >Future OCR Courpus Building For Non Latin Languages '>Et

I will talk about the knowledge gained from the event, the planning involved in coordinating with various organizations, and the status of Malayalam Wikisource as of 2014. I also plan to engage in discussion with the audience regarding the planning process, the challenges involved and the reasons why we could organize this event successfully.

Track

GLAM Outreach
WikiCulture & Community

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long): 30 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Yes, depending upon scholarship.

Slides or further information (optional)

Special requests

Interested attendees

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--Netha Hussain (talk) 09:06, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:15, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Micru (talk) 13:33, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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