CIS-A2K

by Sumandro Chattapadhyay last modified Dec 15, 2015 07:42 AM
The key mandate of the Access to Knowledge project at CIS (CIS-A2K) is to work towards catalysing the growth of the open knowledge movement in south Asia and in Indic languages. From September 2012, CIS has been actively involved in growing the open knowledge movement in India through a grant received from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). The current focus of the CIS-A2K team spans over 5 language areas (Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia, and Telugu), 2 community strengthening initiatives, and 6 stand-alone Wikimedia projects.
CIS-A2K Logo

Mission

The mission of CIS-A2K is to catalyze the growth of open knowledge movement in South Asia and in Indic languages. Within the Wikimedia universe CIS-A2K specifically strives to further grow the Indic and English Wikimedia projects and communities by:

  • supporting and serving the Indian Wikimedia communities in all possible ways;
  • building institutional partnerships;
  • bringing more content under free license;
  • designing and executing projects with community participation;
  • strengthening the Wikimedia volunteers; and
  • fostering and enabling an appropriate legal and technological ecosystem.

 

Work Plans

Work plans and other programme documents can be accessed here:

 

Activities and Feedback

If you have a general proposal/suggestion for Access to Knowledge team you can write on the requests page. If you have appreciations or feedback on our work, please share it on feedback page.

 

Recent Posts

8th IBA International Conference by Prasad Krishna — last modified Apr 04, 2016 03:32 PM
The 8th IBA International Conference was organized by Indus Business Academy in Bengaluru from March 24 to 26, 2016. The theme of the conference was Taking India to Greater Heights. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a talk on Democratizing of Knowledge Access- Case of Regional Language Wikipedia.
Blog Entry Can Wikipedia revive dying Indian languages? by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Feb 29, 2016 02:54 PM
Yes, by encouraging content and involvement, Wikipedia language communities keep languages relevant.
Blog Entry Looking ahead to the future of the Kannada Wikipedia: Vasanth S.N. by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Feb 29, 2016 02:15 PM
Vasanth S.N. has edited the Kannada-langauge Wikipedia since 2006. As part of the WikipediansSpeak series, I caught up with Vasanth to learn about his contributions to the Kannada Wikipedia, which just celebrated its 13th anniversary. In the discussion Vasanth shares his long time involvement in the Wikimedia movement, and what drives him every day to edit Wikipedia and helping other fellow Wikimedians.
Blog Entry Community Digest—Estonians working on a new feedback system for Wikipedia articles by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Feb 27, 2016 06:30 AM
Community digest is a weekly publication on Wikimedia Blog. This week, I have authored a section on the Kannada Wikipedia's 13th anniversary that is being celebrated today. It includes a small section from a longer interview with Kannada Wikipedian Vasanth S.N. The two blogs on creating Odia-language character encoding converters I had written before in the Huffington Post and the DNA are also featured in the digest.
International Mother Language Day by Prasad Krishna — last modified Feb 27, 2016 06:17 AM
On 21 February 2016, Eenadu published a special story on the occasion of International Mother language day in Hyderabad edition. The special story covered Wikipedians effort to develop Encyclopedic content online and also about multi-lingual (English-Telugu) Wikipedians meetup organized in December 2015.
Blog Entry Cultural institution AKA GLAM for more OER by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Feb 27, 2016 06:00 AM
My submission titled "Cultural institution AKA GLAM for more OER" under the theme of "Innovative approaches to opening up cultural heritage collections for education" has been selected for the OER16 conference to be held in Edinburg, Scotland from 19 to 20 April 2016.
Blog Entry କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟର ଯୁଗରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Mar 14, 2016 07:27 AM
In 2013, the Centre for Internet and Society commissioned a project to create a typeface and input methods for for Ol chiki script that is used to write in the Santali language. Santali is one of the many victims that has large number of native language speakers but really low activism to preserve the language though it is not yet among the 196 endangered languages as identified by UNESCO.
Blog Entry ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ପାଇଁ ଏକ ଅନୁଶୀଳନ by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Feb 27, 2016 04:28 AM
On the day of the International Mother Language Day, it is important to look outside and draw inspirations from several success stories of digital activism for languages. Hebrew, an ancient language that was almost dead for over 1500 years was revived from ashes like phoenix. Even after being honoured with the classical language status in the same category of Sanskrit and Tamil, Odia has not seen much progress in the digital sphere.
Blog Entry ମାତୃଭାଷା ଦିବସ: ଆଜିର ସମସ୍ୟା ଓ ଆହ୍ୱାନ by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Feb 26, 2016 04:52 PM
The article was published in the editorial section of Odia newspaper the Sambad on February 21, 2016. This piece explains about the challenges of expanding a knowledge base in Odia language and helping it grow beyond just the literature and to a language of knowledge.
The Intellects holds 2nd International Conclave of Odia Language by Prasad Krishna — last modified Feb 27, 2016 05:35 AM
The Intellects, a Delhi-based progressive forum of intellectuals, held the 2nd International Conclave of Odia Language at the India International Centre in New Delhi today.

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