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Exercise to Correct articles in Tulu Wikipedia begins
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/exercise-to-correct-articles-in-tulu-wikipedia-begins
<b>It will go on till Saturday at the Ramakrishna pre-university college.</b>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Exercise.jpg" alt="Exercise" class="image-inline" title="Exercise" /></th>
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</tbody>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/exercise-to-correct-articles-in-tulu-wikipedia-begins'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/exercise-to-correct-articles-in-tulu-wikipedia-begins</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaTulu Wikipedia2016-05-01T10:37:12ZNews ItemCelebrating the 13th anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kannada-wikipedias-13-year-old-journey-of-knowledge-sharing
<b>The Kannada-language Wikipedia, arguably the largest online encyclopedia in Kannada language, celebrated its 13th anniversary on February 14, 2016 in Mangalore.</b>
<p id="docs-internal-guid-f8142534-c87e-3859-9966-b4739a2a351e" dir="ltr">To celebrate the journey of the project and the community, Kannada Wikipedians gathered at St. Aloysius College Mangalore, Karnataka. The larger Kannada Wikimedia community including long time Wikipedians and new members like the students, faculty involved in <a href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education">Wikipedia Education Programs</a> gathered, participated in a day long edit-a-thon and chalked out plans for the future. The event is organised by the Kannada Wikimedia community and Dr. Vishwanatha Badikana, Wikipedian and Assistant Professor of Kannada department at St. Aloysius College coordinated the event locally.</p>
<p dir="ltr">117 people gathered in the event out of which 96 were active editors of the Kannada Wikipedia community. Noted Kannada-computing researcher Kinnikambla Padmanabha Rao (widely known as KP Rao) addressed the public event and engaged with the audience about defining Kannada Wikipedia’s role a large role in widening Kannada’s presence on the Internet. The local organisers also took the event participants through a heritage walk in the heritage village of Pilikula Nisarga Dhama, an open library of the rich cultural heritage of Karnataka. The heritage walk resulted in over 300 image uploads on Wikimedia Commons ranging from the life and culture of coastal Karnataka to select rich heritage of the state. 20 new editors also participated in the event and they were oriented on basics of Wikipedia editing and <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/">Creative Commons licenses</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Triveni.K, one of the participants who is now pursuing her MSc. at Christ University, explains this event as a great learning platform for even core Wikipedia policies in details apart from many other Wikipedia policies she learnt here. “I’m little occupied for my exams but when it is over, I will be back on Wikipedia”, shares Triveni.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Prior to the event, four edit-a-thons were organised in four different cities of Karnataka. Themes chosen for the cities were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannada_literature">Kannada literature</a> in Mysore, Mechanical Engineering in Sagara, Science-related articles in Bangalore and article on notable female of the coastal Karnataka region in Mangalore. Follow up edit-a-thons were organised after the anniversary celebration with the same themes that were there in the previous session for the first three places where the follow up edit-a-thons in St. Aloysius College and St. Agnes College were both on medicinal plants.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The<a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1"> first ever edit</a> on Kannada Wikipedia was made on 12 June 2003 with a message “Kannada Vishwa Koshakke Suswaagatha!” (meaning “Welcome to the Kannada encyclopedia” in Kannada). However it took over a year -- on July 12, 2004 the first article about a city<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimoga"> Shimoga</a><a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E0%B2%B6%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%B5%E0%B2%AE%E0%B3%8A%E0%B2%97%E0%B3%8D%E0%B2%97&oldid=1463"> was created</a>. Over the last decade Kannada Wikipedia has been a great gamechanger for the<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannada"> Kannada language</a> where the Wikipedians have played a great role in making it a household name -- needless to say that <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kannada_Wikipedia_stats_%28December_2015%29.png">705,199 unique visitors</a> read the articles every month as per the December 2015 statistics. The annual average of active editors for last year was 48, 91 (February) being the highest and 22 (May) the lowest and 80 being the count in last December. The peaks and valleys also signify that major outreach like<a href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Countries/India/Christ_University/CUWEP2015_NOVEMBER"> Wikipedia Education Program at Christ University Bengaluru</a> could have boosted the total number of editors during the months when the program was being rolled out. The project since its inception has gone through many ups and downs over time, the major one being a small community to edit and curate such a high level task of creating new articles in Kannada, editing and enriching them with more information and citations, and cleaning up many articles. The biggest hurdle, as<a href="http://www.hpnadig.net/blog/2011/10/22/how-google-irreparably-wounded-kannada-wikipedia/755"> explained</a> by Wikimedian<a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:HPNadig"> Hari Prasad Nadig</a>, has been cleaning up the articles created by paid translations of Google when Kannada Wikipedia along with many other Indian language Wikipedias were used as testing grounds for improving<a href="http://translate.google.com/"> Google Translate</a>, a multilingual machine translation tool.<a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:VASANTH_S.N."> Vasanth S.N.</a>, a Kannada Wikipedian who has cleaned up over 60 such articles prefers to use an existing good quality encyclopedia like the 14 volume Kannada Vishwakosha, published by Mysore University and<a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/university-of-mysore-releases-kannada-vishwakosha-under-cc-license"> relicensed</a> under<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/"> CC-BY-SA 3.0</a> by the university, as a resource to create and improve articles.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The 14th anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia was another milestone in the long journey of Kannada language and there are many more to come. More about the event could be read on the <a href="http://kn.wikipedia.org/s/1daf">event page</a> on Kannada Wikipedia.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><em>Ananth Subray, Programme Associate, CIS-A2K contributed to this blog.</em></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kannada-wikipedias-13-year-old-journey-of-knowledge-sharing'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kannada-wikipedias-13-year-old-journey-of-knowledge-sharing</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaKannada Wikipedia2016-05-23T09:08:23ZBlog EntryCIS - A2K Work Plan: July 2016 - June 2017
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-a2k-work-plan-july-2016-june-2017
<b>One of the key mandates of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is to work towards catalyzing the growth of the free and open knowledge movement in Indic languages. CIS has been a steward of the Wikimedia movement in India since December 2008. Since September 2012, we at CIS-A2K, have been actively involved in growing the movement in India through (i) a grant received from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for the period September 2012 - June 2014, (ii) the FDC Grant received for the period July 2014 - June 2015 and (iii) the FDC Grant received for the period July 2015 - June 2016. Based on the productive experience of working with various Indic Wikimedia communities, CIS-A2K has developed this work plan for July 2016 to June 2017.</b>
<p>This was originally published on <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017">Meta-wiki</a> on April 2, 2016.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">We have revised the work plan template taking into account the changed proposal plan sent out by WMF and in light of the feedback that we have received from FDC assessment during last proposal application. The FDC feedback is taken into account at the level of design, RoI and ensuring quality for all our activities.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">CIS-A2K responses towards Indic communities concerns</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">During the last plan period CIS-A2K received the following complaints, suggestions, and feedback. We have attempted to address the concerns under redesigned CIS-A2K 2.0. This table was first prepared during our progress report for the current grant and A2K would like to acknowledge the learnings derived out of the suggestions and feedback it received during the last plan. Please see the table <strong><a title="Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round2/The Centre for Internet and Society/Progress report form" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Progress_report_form#CIS-A2K_responses_towards_Indic_communities_concerns">here.</a></strong></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Background to CIS-A2K Program</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>CIS-A2K is working with the Indic Wikimedia communities since December 2008, when Jimbo Wales came to India and visited Bangalore. In mid-2012 CIS-A2K received a financial grant from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and since then it has been actively involved in growing the Wikimedia and free knowledge movement in India. Following a grant received from WMF for the period September 2012 to June 2014, CIS-A2K received FDC Grant for the periods July 2014 to June 2015 and July 2015 to June 2016. Based on the 41-month experience of working with various Indic Wikimedia communities, CIS-A2K has prepared this year's work plan for July 2016 to June 2017.</strong></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Objective</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>CIS-A2K is committed to improve Wikimedia movement in India by supporting Indic Wikimedia communities and working on Wikimedia projects and collaborating with FOSS and other like minded movement partners. It also strives to catalyse the growth of open and free knowledge movement in South Asia and especially in India. Our main objectives are:</strong></p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Bringing content under Creative Commons and similar free licenses;</strong></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Supporting and empowering Indic Wikimedia communities;</strong></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Building and maintaining institutional partnerships in order to support the open knowledge movement and creation of open knowledge resources;</strong></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Planning and executing Wikimedia projects with wider community participations and effective consultation;</strong></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Fostering and enabling an appropriate legal and technological ecosystem;</strong></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Building sustainable communities and grooming potential leaders to represent the communities and projects globally.</strong></div>
</li></ol>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Context</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong> </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">CIS-A2K has focussed on creating sustainable programmes and capacity development for communities in the last few years. CIS-A2K intends to continue its work during the proposed grant period and would continue to focus on the following Indian language Wikimedia projects: Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia, Telugu (Focus Language Areas, FLA). In order to achieve higher RoI, A2K will be including Tulu in its language plan from this plan period.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">CIS-A2K will continue to provide general support and service to all other Indian language Wikimedia communities for all Wikimedia projects as necessary and as requested by the communities or individuals from the community through its request page and needs assessment workshops.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Community strengthening initiatives will be prioritised in order to address the poor participation of Wikimedians from Indian sub continent in particular and global south in general. CIS-A2K has rolled out initiatives such as Train the Trainer and MediaWiki training, focused edit-a-thons and GLAM activities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">CIS-A2K and Indian language Wikimedia communities would greatly benefit from collaborating with these initiatives and CIS-A2K during this grant period would attempt to bring these communities closer with a series of interactions, hack-a-thons and training sessions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Our institutional partnerships have played a very important role in content donation, generation of content, attracting new readers and editors and collaborating opportunities with existing community members. They have provided much needed press coverage towards Indian language Wikimedia projects. The institution partnerships and WEP have been redesigned as per community suggestions.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Methodology</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This work plan has been prepared based on an extensive engagement with various Wikimedia movement participants and enthusiasts in India. These include:</p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">Wikimedia community members across all Indic communities: We have talked to a large number of Indic Wikimedia community members and specially community members of our focused language areas;</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">Institutional Partners of CIS-A2K: We have taken feedback and suggestions from our institutional partners regarding the challenges of conducting WEP;</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">Like-minded advocates of free and open knowledge;</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">Surveys and Interviews.</div>
</li></ol>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Performance against plans and projected targets</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Overall</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/w1.jpg" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="w1" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Kannada</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_w1.jpg" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="w2" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Konkani</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy2_of_w1.jpg" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="w3" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Marathi</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy3_of_w1.jpg" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="w4" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Odia</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy4_of_w1.jpg" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Odia" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Telugu</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy6_of_w1.jpg" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="w6" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Progress against goals set</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy7_of_w1.jpg" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Progress" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Language Area Work Plans</h3>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: justify;">
<p>CIS-A2K has put in significant efforts across four focus language areas Kannada, Konkani, Odia and Telugu during the previous work plans. CIS-A2K proposed and initiated Marathi as a focus language project during the last proposal plan. As A2K's strategy of working with FLA has resulted in community building and sustainable outreach efforts, we intend to work with the nascent Tulu community towards making Tulu Wikipedia live.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The <a title="CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Tulu" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Tulu">Tulu Wikipedia</a> plan is a 'minimal cost program' and is not budgeted same as the other FLA. A2K has been able to build a strong community in Mangalore for the Kannada and Konkani Wikimedia projects. Tulu community draws its editor base and institutional support from Mangalore, hence A2K's plans towards Kannada and Konkani Wikimedia projects can also have the added dimension of Tulu Wikipedia incubation activities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Detailed work-plan for each of these language areas may be seen here (in alphabetical order):</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li><a title="CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Kannada" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Kannada">Kannada</a></li>
<li><a title="CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Konkani" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Konkani">Konkani</a></li>
<li><a title="CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Marathi" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Marathi">Marathi</a></li>
<li><a title="CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Odia" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Odia">Odia</a></li>
<li><a title="CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Telugu" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Telugu">Telugu</a></li></ul>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy8_of_w1.jpg/@@images/ab0f737d-8061-40d7-bcad-f3850817771a.jpeg" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Women's Wikipedia Editathon" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Woman's day editathon at Christ University</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Some of the key factors that determined the July 2016-June 2017 work plan:</strong></p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li><strong>Development of Focus Language Area Plan:</strong> A2K's strategy of building a plan along with the consultation of the community and further customised as per the feedback received by communities and FDC Staff have resulted well across five languages. CIS-A2K is pleased to inform that during July 2015-June 2016 it engaged with all the five focus language area plans as it has been able to recruit program officers and program associates for the vacant positions. It is important to note that while we are engaging with Tulu Wikipedia community with intentions of making Tulu Wikipedia live, it is also a 'minimal cost' program. It helps A2K in acheiving higher RoI for monetary resources and optimisation of staff and volunteer expertise.</li>
<li><strong>A2K 2.0 as a response to FDC and Indic Wikimedians' Feedback:</strong> As a learning derived out of FDC, WMF Board and Indic Wikimedians suggestions, CIS-A2K has revised its program structure and composition of work. Please find details of revised divisional of responsibilities of A2K team.</li>
<li><strong>Partnership and networking with institutions and groups:</strong> CIS-A2K has had the privilege of partnering with educational institutions and developmental organisations. These partnerships and collaborations not only resulted in significant quality-content contributions, but also lead to the diversification and expansion of that particular language Wikimedia community. In order to strengthen the communities, increase participation and conduct GLAM activities and attract content donation A2K would look out for possible institutional partnerships.</li>
<li><strong>Providing sustainability and developing leadership skills:</strong> A2K has always worked towards enabling Indian Language Wikimedia communities to achieve sustainability and visibility amongst the global communities. We have been greatly privilege to work with the Focus Language Communities and would like to pass on our learning through collaborations with other language communities, while exiting few of our current FLA programs. Through our skill building initiatives such as Train-the-Trainer, Media Wiki Training and Train-a-Wikipedian A2K has also been able to support growth of a new community of volunteers to support the existing community.</li></ol>
<h3><span id="Community_Strengthening_Initiatives" class="mw-headline">Community Strengthening Initiatives</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span id="Community_Strengthening_Initiatives" class="mw-headline"><strong> </strong></span><span class="mw-headline">CIS-A2K started two community strengthening initiatives— <a title="TTT" class="mw-redirect" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/TTT">Train-the-Trainer</a> and <a title="MWTTT" class="mw-redirect" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MWTTT">MediaWiki Training</a> to grow and strengthen the Indic Wikimedia projects and the associated communities, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The earlier iteration of these two programs played an important role in connecting the Indian language Wikimedia communities and fostering multi-lingual projects. This year also CIS-A2K proposes to undertake these two successful community strengthening initiatives. In mid-March 2016, CIS-A2K conducted a 2-day-long nationwide Wikipedia Education Program review workshop that brought students and faculty members from institutions that are running WEP in partnership with CIS-A2K and several important topics such as structural challenges such as academic schedule, institutional interest, faculty buy-in and more importantly response by the students were discussed. This year also CIS-A2K proposes to conduct such a workshop.</span></p>
<h3><span id="Creating_Movement_Resources" class="mw-headline">Creating Movement Resources</span></h3>
<p><span id="Creating_Movement_Resources" class="mw-headline"> </span>CIS-A2K has been creating resources to help Indic Wikimedia communities. All the resources are created after assessing the communities' need assessment and close interactions with many of the active community members.</p>
<p>CIS-A2K proposed to create the following resources (this also include printed resources):</p>
<ul>
<li>Wikipedia editing tutorials</li>
<li>PEG and IEG application handbooks;</li>
<li>Handbook on how apply for various WMF scholarships;</li>
<li>Handbook on best practices for Wiki-events, workshops, meetup, outreach and other programs;</li>
<li>FAQ for content donors –give this job to a law school intern. No need of this handbook to be translated to Indian languages.</li>
<li>Bookmarks creation to increase awareness about Indian Wikimedia Projects;</li></ul>
<h3>General Support and Service to the Movement</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">CIS-A2K regularly supports Indic-language Wikimedia communities to conduct workshops, edit-a-thons and events to improve their projects. All these requests are placed at <a title="Talk:CIS-A2K/Requests" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:CIS-A2K/Requests">CIS-A2K request page</a> and fulfilled after extensive community discussion and needs assessment.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Currently CIS-A2K is working on a program named <a title="CIS-A2K/Train-a-Wikipedian" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Train-a-Wikipedian">Train-a-Wikipedian</a> (TAW) to identify enthusiastic Indic Wikipedians and train and groom them to develop their editing skills. We'll continue empowering Indic Wikimedia community members through this program.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Learning and Evaluation</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Following the <a title="Grants:Learning & Evaluation/Global metrics" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Learning_%26_Evaluation/Global_metrics">Global metrics</a> and discussions some members of the Wikimedia community, the A2K program had put together some evaluation tools to assess the impact of its work during the last year. We have included some more metrics for evaluation this year.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Evaluation tools</strong></p>
<dt>Participation</dt>
<ol>
<li>Number of active editors involved</li>
<li>Number of newly registered users</li>
<li>Number of individuals involved</li></ol>
<dl><dt>Content</dt></dl>
<ol>
<li>Number of new images/media added to Wikimedia article pages</li>
<li>Number of new images/media uploaded to Wikimedia Commons</li>
<li>Number of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects</li>
<li>Number of bytes added to and/or deleted from Wikimedia projects</li></ol>
<h3>Reports</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">CIS-A2K will undertake monthly and annually review of our work using the above evaluation tools. CIS-A2K report activities and progress to Wikimedia foundation in monthly meetings.<sup><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup> CIS-A2K team will also report the successes and learnings to the Wikimedia India & the Global Community. CIS-A2K team will actively review progress of each language area plan in collaboration with the respective Wikimedia community. Based on this feedback we will undertake mid-course corrections, should there be a need. To summarize following reports will be published in the year of 2016 - 2017:</p>
<ul>
<li>Progress report (for the current grant)</li>
<li>Impact Report (July 2016 - June 2017)</li>
<li>Monthly report to Wikimedia foundation;</li>
<li>Monthly Newsletters</li>
<li>Annual report to CIS</li></ul>
<h3>Monthly Review and Learning Sessions</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Last year we <a title="CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2015 - June 2016" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2015_-_June_2016#Monthly_review_and_learning_sessions">wrote about</a> conducting monthly review and learning sessions. Currently CIS-A2K is conducting monthly learning sessions to critically reflect on the successes and failures of our work internally. The learnings are shared with Wikimedia Foundation for their feedback and suggestion. We'll continue conducting monthly reviews and learnings and progress will be shared with Wikimedia Foundation. We will try to share the same the Wikimedia India members.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Budget</h3>
<p>Please find link to CIS-A2K program budget for proposed grant period July 2016-June 2017 <a title="CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Budget" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Budget">here</a></p>
<h3>Feedback</h3>
<p>We appreciate your valuable feedback. However, for the sake of structured engagement by everyone, we request you to consider the following before you share your feedback.</p>
<ul>
<li>For feedback on the overall A2K Work Plan you can write <a title="Talk:CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017"><strong>here</strong></a>.</li>
<li>For feedback on respective Language area plans, please write on the discussion page of the respective language plan.</li></ul>
<dl><dd>
<ul>
<li><a title="CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Kannada" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Kannada"><strong>Kannada</strong></a> plan (<a title="Talk:CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Kannada" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Kannada"><strong>discussions</strong></a>)</li>
<li><a title="CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Konkani" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Konkani"><strong>Konkani</strong></a> plan (<a title="Talk:CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Konkani" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Konkani"><strong>discussions</strong></a></li>
<li><a title="CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Marathi" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Marathi"><strong>Marathi</strong></a> plan (<a title="Talk:CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Marathi" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Marathi"><strong>discussions</strong></a>)</li>
<li><a title="CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Odia" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Odia"><strong>Odia</strong></a> plan (<a title="Talk:CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2014 - June 2015/Odia" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2014_-_June_2015/Odia"><strong>discussions</strong></a>)</li>
<li><a title="CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2016 - June 2017/Telugu" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2016_-_June_2017/Telugu"><strong>Telugu</strong></a> plan (<a title="Talk:CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2014 - June 2015/Telugu" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2014_-_June_2015/Telugu"><strong>discussions</strong></a>)</li></ul>
</dd></dl>
<ul>
<li>Alternatively you could also share your feedback over e-mail at tanveer@cis-india.org. Please use the subject line Feedback on Work Plan.</li>
<li>Should you feel the need to discuss any aspect of the plan before sharing your feedback, please write to us and we can set up a telephone/Skype call.</li></ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-a2k-work-plan-july-2016-june-2017'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-a2k-work-plan-july-2016-june-2017</a>
</p>
No publishersunilCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaFeatured2016-04-29T09:36:45ZBlog EntryBHASHA - Indian Languages Digital Festival
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/bhasha-indian-languages-digital-festival
<b>Subhashish Panigrahi gave a talk at the Bhasha- India Languages Digital Festival a conference organized by news media YourStory, at New Delhi on March 11, 2016. In the panel "The challenges of making regional language content available on the Web and on mobiles" Panigrahi spoke about some of the challenges in growing the Indian-language Wikipedia projects and the communities. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The notes for the talk are below:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Wikipedia, that exists in many Indian languages are not known to masses. I personally did not know about the <a title="w:or:Main page" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/or:Main_page">Odia Wikipedia</a> until 2011 when a friend told me about its existence. Back then the project was completely inactive. And then a couple of friends and I started contributing, more contributors joined and the project grew up to what it is today. The site now has over 300,000 visitors every month and it is the largest visited site in Odia language on the Internet. This could probably be the same case for your language.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It has been quite challenging in the past to grow the Indian-language Wikipedia projects. There are many challenges and I would talk about eight of them:</p>
<dl style="text-align: justify;"><dt>1. Language communities</dt></dl>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The language communities of many of the Indian languages are such that many of them even do no know how to search any information online in their language typed in their script. Some even share that because Google's home page does not have their script means that their language does not exist on the Internet. There exist a large gap of ignorance.</p>
<dl style="text-align: justify;"><dt>2. Wikipedia's editor community</dt></dl>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Wikipedia, as you all know, is written by people like you and me. And from writing to editing everything happens voluntarily. As many people do not probably know or do not try to learn that they themselves can correct the mistakes and inaccuracy that exist in many Wikipedia articles. The Wikipedia editor communities for several Indian languages are really small. When these languages are spoken by millions of people, only a handful editors contribute in editing the Wikipedia in these languages.</p>
<dl style="text-align: justify;"><dt>3. Language input</dt></dl>
<p style="text-align: justify;">There is a vast majority of people in this country that do not know how to type in their own language.</p>
<dl style="text-align: justify;"><dt>4. Low availability of Indian-language content on the Internet</dt></dl>
<p style="text-align: justify;">There are two stages to the lack of Open Access to information. First, lack of native language content on the Internet bars many to access knowledge. Take the example of my state. When the Kerala government's official tourism portal is available in Odia and other Indian languages, my state, the Odisha government's tourism portal has no information in Odia-language. Our languages are neglected largely in our own states.</p>
<dl style="text-align: justify;"><dt>5. Mismatch of conventional and new media</dt></dl>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Many conventional have still been using non-standard variants of ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems instead of adopting the Unicode standard. Unicode being a global standard and having the advantage of unifying the world has been available for Indian languages about 25 years now.<sup class="reference"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Subhashish_Panigrahi_speaking_at_%22BHASHA-Indian_Languages_Digital_Festival%22,_New_Delhi,_11_March_2016.ogg#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup> But many of our traditional media has failed to adopt this. Malayala Manorama, one of the most circulated dailies in Malayalam languages and one of the oldest Indian newspaper still has not started using Unicode on their website. Same is the case for many other newspapers in India.</p>
<dl style="text-align: justify;"><dt>6. Lack of Open Access</dt></dl>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The information produced on the Internet in general and by the government, in particular, are mostly copyrighted. The paywalled garden of copyright restrictions keeps the information closed and stop people from sharing and learning more. On the contrary, Wikipedia is available under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license which allows anyone to make use of the content and even distribute commercial copies of its content. The idea of opening up information for masses in a free license could make the information reach to millions of people.</p>
<dl style="text-align: justify;"><dt>7. Mobile input</dt></dl>
<p style="text-align: justify;">With over 1 billion people with mobile phones, the 15% internet penetration rate will soon grow meaning lot many Indians will have access to the Internet. If these people are not educated about native language input then they will be victims of the English-centric Internet rather than being able to enjoy the virtue of the same. Many Indians that have smartphones need pre-built input methods to be able to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.</p>
<dl style="text-align: justify;"><dt>8. People with disabilities</dt></dl>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Many cannot read, speak and write. India has over 60 million people with hearing impairment.<sup class="reference"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Subhashish_Panigrahi_speaking_at_%22BHASHA-Indian_Languages_Digital_Festival%22,_New_Delhi,_11_March_2016.ogg#cite_note-2">[2]</a></sup> There is a need for good quality text to and speech to text engine for these languages. Also, these software products have to be free software so common people, that cannot afford to buy expensive proprietary software like <a title="w:JAWS (screen reader)" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAWS_(screen_reader)">JAWS</a>, can contribute to Wikipedia in their language. Many text-to-speech engines that are available today for Indian languages sound so mechanical that it is way hard for common speakers to use them.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/bhasha-indian-languages-digital-festival'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/bhasha-indian-languages-digital-festival</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaWikimediaCIS-A2KWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-06-18T17:14:37ZNews Item8 Challenges In Growing Indian-Language Wikipedias
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/huffington-post-march-19-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-8-challenges-in-growing-indian-language-wikipedias
<b>While speaking at BHASHA: Indian Languages Digital Festival, a day-long discourse at New Delhi on Indian languages and their state in new media, especially digital platforms, I touched upon Wikipedia in Indian languages. Most people, in fact, do not even know that Wikipedia exists in many Indian languages. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The article was first published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.in/subhashish-panigrahi-/8-of-many-challenges-in-g_b_9457704.html">Huffington Post</a> on March 19, 2016. This was cross-posted in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.medianama.com/2016/03/223-indic-wikipedia-growth-slow-subhashish-panigrahi/">Medianama</a> titled as Multiple key factors preventing Indic Wikipedia growth on March 21, 2016.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">I personally did not know about the <a href="https://or.wikipedia.org/" target="_hplink">Odia Wikipedia</a> until 2011 when a friend told me about its existence. Back then the project was completely inactive. And then a couple of friends and I started contributing, and the project grew to what it is today. The site now has more than <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Odia_Wikipedia_stats_(January_2016).png" target="_hplink">300,000 visitors</a> every month and it is the most-visited Odia language site on the internet. Other languages, I believe, could follow a similar trajectory on Wikipedia, but there are several challenges along the way.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Many people do not even know how to search for information online in their own language, typed in its script.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>1. Ignorance of language communities</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="callout">Many people do not even know how to search for information online in their own language, typed in its script. Some even share that because Google's home page does not have their script it means that their language does not exist on the internet. This ignorance perpetuates the gap.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>2.Wikipedia's editor community</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Wikipedia, as you all know, is written and edited by people like you and me who volunteer their efforts. Many people probably do not know or do not try to learn that they themselves can correct the mistakes and inaccuracies that exist in many Wikipedia articles and become editors. The Wikipedia editor communities for several Indian languages are really small. When these languages are spoken by millions of people, only a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.in/subhashish-panigrahi-/when-wikipedia-is-turning_b_9025690.html" target="_hplink">handful of editors</a> contribute in editing the Wikipedia in these languages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>3.Language input in computers</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A vast majority of people in this country <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-01-17/news/30635792_1_indian-languages-indic-computer" target="_hplink">do not</a> know <a href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector" target="_hplink">how to type</a> in their own language. There is also little documentation for users to learn about language input. Even though many government-run schools in India are seeing more computers and internet, native language input is not widely. However, there is a lot of free software for language input and the <a href="https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W/W11/W11-3501.pdf" target="_hplink">challenges</a> of typing in Indian language that existed a few years back have almost gone. You just have to look for the right tools.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>4. Language input in mobile devices</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">With over <a href="http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/PressRealease/Document/PR-TeleSubData_Oct_2015.pdf" target="_hplink">1 billion</a> people with mobile phones, the 15% internet penetration rate will soon grow. This in turn will help a lot many Indians to get access to the internet. If these people are not educated about native language input then they will be unnecessarily constricted by the English-centric internet. Many Indians that have smartphones need inbuilt input methods to be able to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="callout">Many Indians that have smartphones need inbuilt input methods to be able to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>5. Low availability of Indian-language content on the Internet</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Lack of native language content on the Internet bars many from accessing knowledge. As per the Internet and Mobile Association of India survey conducted in 2012, over 6% of the population is deterred from going online because of lack of content in their languages. Take the example of my state. When the Kerala government's <a href="https://www.keralatourism.org/languages/" target="_hplink">official tourism portal</a> is available in Odia and other Indian languages, the Odisha government's tourism portal has <a href="http://www.odishatourism.gov.in/" target="_hplink">no information</a> in Odia language today. Our languages are neglected in our own states.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>6. Mismatch of conventional and new media</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Many conventional media houses still use non-standard variants of ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems instead of adopting the Unicode standard. Unicode being a global standard and having the advantage of unifying the world has been available for Indian languages for about <a href="http://www.unicode.org/Public/reconstructed/1.0.0/UnicodeData.txt" target="_hplink">25 years</a> now. But many of our traditional media have failed to adopt this. Many popular Indian-language newspapers are yet to become available in Unicode.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>7. Lack of open access</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Most of the information produced on the internet in general and by the <a href="http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/uploads/Patent_ManualOct_25th_07.pdf" target="_hplink">government</a>, in particular, is copyrighted. The paywalled garden of copyright restrictions keeps the information closed and stops people from sharing and learning more. On the contrary, Wikipedia is available under a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License" target="_hplink">Creative Commons Share-Alike license</a> which allows anyone to make use of the content and even distribute commercial copies of it. The idea of opening up information for the masses in a free license could make the information reach millions of people.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="callout">Many conventional media houses still use non-standard variants of ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems instead of adopting the Unicode standard.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>8. People with disabilities</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Many people cannot read, speak and write. India has over <a href="http://www.entwb.com/public-patients/general-information/deafness" target="_hplink">60 million people</a> with hearing impairment. There is a need for a good quality text-to-speech and speech-to-text engine for people with physical disabilities. Also, these software products have to be free so that common people who cannot afford to buy expensive proprietary software like JAWS can contribute to Wikipedia in their language. Many text-to-speech engines that are available today for Indian languages sound so mechanical that it is tough for common speakers to use them.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/huffington-post-march-19-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-8-challenges-in-growing-indian-language-wikipedias'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/huffington-post-march-19-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-8-challenges-in-growing-indian-language-wikipedias</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaWikimediaCIS-A2KWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-06-18T17:11:05ZBlog EntryEight Challenges That Indian-Language Wikipedias Need to Overcome
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-wire-march-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-eight-challenges-that-indian-language-wikipedias-need-to-overcome
<b>Even after a decade of existence, Indian language Wikipedias are not yet known to many Indian language speakers. Wikipedia, being the largest available encyclopedia made in the human history, it what it is today because of the hundreds and thousands of volunteer-editors. But while native-language Wikipedias are becoming game-changers in other corners of the world, the scenario in India is skewed. In my experience, here are a number of challenges that Indian-language Wikipedias are currently facing.</b>
<p>The article was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://thewire.in/2016/03/17/eight-challenges-that-indian-language-wikipedias-need-to-overcome-25062/">the Wire </a>on March 17, 2016. A version of the article was also mirrored by <a class="external-link" href="https://opensource.com/life/16/3/8-challenges-improving-indian-language-wikipedias">Opensource.com </a>on March 28, 2016.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>1. Language communities:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The language communities of many of the Indian languages are such that many of them do not know how to search for information online, in their language typed in their script. Some of these communities even believe that because Google’s home page does not have their script, their language does not exist on the Internet. Starting with<a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-06-22/news/29689671_1_languages-machine-translation-indic" target="_blank"> five Indian languages</a> as the language of its interface, Google now has has nine Indian languages. But this does not stop a Santali or Manipuri user to search in Unicode Ol chiki (script for Santali) or in Unicode Meithei (script for Manipuri). Google or any search engine for that matter will display anything available in any script on the Internet. But the lack of this very thing is keeping many people away from being connected to the Internet in general and Wikipedia in particular.\</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>2. Wikipedia’s editor community:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Wikipedia is written by people like you and me. And from writing to editing everything happens voluntarily. As many people do not probably know, or do not try to learn, anybody can correct the mistakes and inaccuracies that exist in many Wikipedia articles. The Wikipedia editor communities for several Indian languages are really small. While these languages are spoken by millions of people, only a<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.in/subhashish-panigrahi-/when-wikipedia-is-turning_b_9025690.html" target="_blank"> handful editors</a> contribute in editing the Wikipedia in these languages. In January this year, the <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hindi_Wikipedia_stats_January_2016.png" target="_blank">Hindi Wikipedia</a>, for instance, had only 89 editors while the total number of Hindi speakers would be over 550 million.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>3. Language input in computers:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A vast majority of people in this country <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-01-17/news/30635792_1_indian-languages-indic-computer" target="_blank">do not</a> know<a href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector" target="_blank"> how to type</a> in their own language.. There is also little documentation for users to learn about language input. Even though many <a href="http://mhrd.gov.in/ict_overview">government-run schools</a> in India are seeing a proliferation of more computers and Internet access, native language input and several other <a href="http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/Government-Schools-Fail-to-Log-into-Computers/2015/11/17/article3132258.ece" target="_blank">essential training of basic computing</a> are not widely taught in schools in all states. What is sad is that there is a wide variety of free software for native-language input and the<a href="https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W/W11/W11-3501.pdf"> challenges</a> of typing in Indian languages that existed a few years back has almost gone.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>4. Language input in mobile devices:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">With over<a href="http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/PressRealease/Document/PR-TeleSubData_Oct_2015.pdf" target="_blank"> 1 billion</a> people with mobile phones, the 15% internet penetration rate will soon grow at a faster pace. This in turn — and also tough competition that compel TSPs to<a href="http://www.mobiletor.com/bsnl-to-drop-3g-internet-rates-by-50-percent-the-tariff-wars-continue/"> drop data charges</a> — will help many Indians get access to the Internet . If these people are not educated about native language input then they will be <a href="http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/Nz7KxIkmUJdacebMwzzcOJ/English-the-Web-and-digital-caste.html" target="_blank">victims</a> of the <a href="https://books.google.co.in/books?id=8CM68DP6dWcC&lpg=PA234&ots=5SsRhkCvJk&dq=English-centric%20Internet&pg=PA234#v=onepage&q=English-centric%20Internet&f=false" target="_blank">English-centric Internet</a> rather than being able to enjoy the virtue of the same. Many Indians that have smartphones need full Indian language support and especially inbuilt input methods to be able to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>5. Low availability of Indian-language content on the Internet:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2015/02/13-digital-divide-developing-world-west/west_internet-access.pdf" target="_blank">Lack of native language content on the Internet</a> is another major factor in the low adoption of Indian language Wikpedias. As per an Internet and Mobile Association of India survey conducted in 2012, over 6% of the population is left behind from joining the online sphere simply because of lack of content in their languages. Take, for instance, my state odisha.While the Kerala government’s<a href="https://www.keralatourism.org/languages/" target="_blank"> official tourism portal</a> is available in Odia and other Indian languages, the Odisha government’s tourism portal itself has<a href="http://www.odishatourism.gov.in/" target="_blank"> no information</a> in Odia-language today. Our languages are neglected largely in our own states.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>6. Mismatch of conventional and new media:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Many conventional media houses still continue to use non-standard variants of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII" target="_blank">ASCII</a>/<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Script_Code_for_Information_Interchange">ISCII</a> script encoding systems, instead of adopting the <a href="http://unicode.org/faq/indic.html">Unicode</a> standard. Unicode being a global standard, and having the advantage of unifying the world, has been available for Indian languages for almost<a href="http://www.unicode.org/Public/reconstructed/1.0.0/UnicodeData.txt"> 25 years</a> now. But much of our vernacular print media has failed to adopt this. Consequently, many popular Indian-language newspapers are yet to become available in Unicode on the open Internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>7. Lack of Open Access: </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Majority of the information produced on the Internet in general and by the<a href="http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/uploads/Patent_ManualOct_25th_07.pdf" target="_blank"> government</a>, in particular, are mostly copyrighted. The paywalled garden of copyright restrictions keeps the information closed and stop people from sharing and learning more. On the contrary, Wikipedia is available under a<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License"> Creative Commons Share-Alike license</a> which allows anyone to make use of the content and even distribute commercial copies of its content. The idea of opening up information for masses in a free license could make information reach millions of people.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>8. People with disabilities:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Many people cannot read, speak and write. India has over<a href="http://www.entwb.com/public-patients/general-information/deafness" target="_blank"> 60 million people</a> with some form of hearing impairment. There is a desperate need for a high-quality <a href="http://www.nvaccess.org/" target="_blank">text-to-speech</a> and speech-to-text engine for people with physical disabilities. Also, these software products have to be free software so that common people, that cannot afford to buy expensive proprietary software like JAWS, can contribute to Wikipedia in their language. Many text-to-speech engines that are available today for Indian languages sound so mechanical that it is difficult for common speakers to use them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Subhashish Panigrahi is an educator and free knowledge evangelist, and currently works for Communications, Program Capacity & Learning at Wikimedia Foundation, and Access to Knowledge at the Centre for Internet and Society. Portions of this article came from a speech that Panigrahi gave at BHASHA: Indian Languages Digital Festival in New Delhi. </em></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-wire-march-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-eight-challenges-that-indian-language-wikipedias-need-to-overcome'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-wire-march-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-eight-challenges-that-indian-language-wikipedias-need-to-overcome</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaWikimediaCIS-A2KWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-03-29T17:05:36ZBlog Entry8 Challenges for Improving Indian Language Wikipedias
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-source-march-28-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-8-challenges-for-improving-indian-language-wikipedias
<b>After more than 10 years in existence, the Indian-language Wikipedias still are not known to many Indian language speakers. Wikipedia became the largest encyclopedia in history as a result of thousands of volunteer editors.</b>
<p>The article was originally published in <a class="external-link" href="http://thewire.in/2016/03/17/eight-challenges-that-indian-language-wikipedias-need-to-overcome-25062/">the Wire</a> on March 17, 2016 and later mirrored on <a class="external-link" href="https://opensource.com/life/16/3/8-challenges-improving-indian-language-wikipedias">Opensource.com </a>on March 28, 2016.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">Whereas native-language Wikipedias are becoming game changers in other corners of the world, the scenario in India is skewed. While speaking at the "<a href="http://indianlanguagefestival.com/2016/#event-agenda">BHASHA: Indian Languages Digital Festival</a>," a day-long discourse at New Delhi on Indian languages and their state in the new media (especially on the digital platforms), I <a href="https://soundcloud.com/psubhashish/bhasha-indian-languages-digital-festival">shared</a> challenges that Indian language Wikipedias are facing.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">1. Language communities</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Many native Indian language speakers do not know how to search online using language typed in their script. Because Google's home page does not display their language script as an option, people often think that their language does not exist on the Internet. Google now has nine Indian languages. But this does not stop a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santali_language">Santali</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meithei_language">Manipuri</a> speaker from searching in Unicode <a href="http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/ol-chiki.html">Ol chiki</a> (script for Santali) or in <a href="http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Meithei_script">Unicode Meithei</a> (script for Manipuri). Google and other search engines will display content in any script on the Internet, but not knowing this keeps many people off the Internet, which also means off of Wikipedia.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">2. Wikipedia's editor community</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Wikipedia is created by people like you and me. From writing to editing, everything happens voluntarily. Many people do not understand that they can correct mistakes and help improve Wikipedia articles. The Wikipedia editor communities for several Indian languages are really small. Although these languages are spoken by millions of people, only a <a href="https://opensource.com/life/16/2/why-its-essential-grow-indian-language-wikipedias">handful of editors</a> contribute in editing the Wikipedia in these languages. As of January 2016, the <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hindi_Wikipedia_stats_January_2016.png">Hindi Wikipedia</a> had only 89 editors, whereas Hindi falls right behind English on the list of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers">top languages by number of native speakers</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">3. Language input in computer</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A majority of people in India <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-01-17/news/30635792_1_indian-languages-indic-computer">do not</a> know <a href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector">how to type</a> in their own language. Also, there is little documentation for users to learn about language input. Even though many government-run schools in India are seeing more computers and have Internet access, native language input and several other <a href="http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/Government-Schools-Fail-to-Log-into-Computers/2015/11/17/article3132258.ece">basic computer training</a> are not widely taught in schools in all states. Free software for language input is available, and the <a href="https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W/W11/W11-3501.pdf">challenges of typing in Indian languages</a> (PDF) that existed in the past are mostly resolved.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">4. Language input in mobile devices</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">With more than <a href="http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/PressRealease/Document/PR-TeleSubData_Oct_2015.pdf">1 billion people in India</a> (PDF) with mobile phones, the 15% Internet penetration rate will soon grow at a faster pace. This growth and tough competition is compelling telecom service providers to <a href="http://www.mobiletor.com/bsnl-to-drop-3g-internet-rates-by-50-percent-the-tariff-wars-continue/">drop data charges</a>, which will help more Indians get access to the Internet. If these people are not educated about native language input, then they will be <a href="http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/Nz7KxIkmUJdacebMwzzcOJ/English-the-Web-and-digital-caste.html">stuck inside an English-centric Internet</a> rather than being able to navigate in their own languages. Many Indians who have smartphones need full Indian language support—and especially built-in input methods—to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">5. Low availability of Indian-language content on the Internet</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2015/02/13-digital-divide-developing-world-west/west_internet-access.pdf">Lack of native language content on the Internet</a> is a barrier to accessing knowledge. For example, let's look at my state Odisha. The Kerala (Indian state) government's <a href="https://www.keralatourism.org/languages/">official tourism portal</a> is available in Odia and other Indian languages, but the Odisha government's tourism portal has <a href="http://www.odishatourism.gov.in/">no information</a> in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odia_language">Odia language</a> today. Our languages are largely neglected <em>in our own states</em>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">6. Mismatch of conventional and new media</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Many conventional media houses still use non-standard variants of ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems instead of adopting the <a href="http://unicode.org/faq/indic.html">Unicode</a> standard. As a global standard, Unicode can help unify the world and has been available for Indian languages for almost 25 years. But many of our print media have failed to adopt this, and many popular Indian-language newspapers still aren't available in Unicode.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">7. Lack of open access</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Much information online, including content created by the government, is under copyright licensing. The pay-wall gardens and copyright restrictions keep information closed and prevents people from sharing content. Wikipedia content, on the other hand, is available under <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License">Creative Commons Share-Alike licensing</a>, which allows anyone to use the content (and even distribute commercial copies of it). The idea of opening up content under free licenses can help information reach countless additional people.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">8. Accessibility</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">India has more than <a href="http://www.entwb.com/public-patients/general-information/deafness">60-million people</a> with hearing impairments. Many people with physical disabilities need good <a href="http://www.nvaccess.org/">text-to-speech</a> and speech-to-text engines. And these software solutions must be free, so that anyone, regardless of their finances, can contribute to Wikipedia in their own languages.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-source-march-28-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-8-challenges-for-improving-indian-language-wikipedias'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-source-march-28-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-8-challenges-for-improving-indian-language-wikipedias</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaWikimediaCIS-A2KWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-03-29T17:05:15ZBlog Entry8th IBA International Conference
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/8th-iba-international-conference
<b>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.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India’s journey since independence has been eventful. The long struggle against colonialism left Indian private capital in a poor state. The Government intervention was essential and hence there was a need for the public sector. Experiments with socialism and national planning turned out to be a mixed success. The 1991 crisis propelled India towards a market driven economy. Politically, its unpopularity reverted India to a state of socialism once again. The 2014 elections have renewed interest in a market driven economy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Indian achievements have been sizable. The successful Mars Mission, Agni mission, Green Revolution, White Revolution, IT industry growth all demonstrate the positive achievements that India has made in the last 60 odd years. In recent months, across the world, there is a renewed interest in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Yet we can hardly be complacent. The lowering oil prices, conflict in the Middle East, slowdown in Chinese economy, fears of Russian expansionism, decline in European growth, concerns about the state of US economy and rising trends in terrorism have created turbulence across different parts of the world. India cannot be immune to these changes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India’s response can manifest itself in multiple forms. There could be rapid expansion of defence procurement and preparedness both on external as well as internal fronts. It could involve building alliances with countries aligned strategically to Indi’s interests.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It could manifest through the rapid growth of manufacturing sector. The services sector could move higher in the value chain. The spillovers generated by the establishment of industries could spawn a major entrepreneurial ecosystem.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With the UN approval to celebrate International Yoga Day, India’s soft spiritual power is also rising in the horizon. Indian philosophical and ideological thoughts are getting renewed interest across different parts of the world. Indian talent, youth demographics etc. have literally placed India on the centre stage. No doubt, exciting times are ahead.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This Conference aims to deliberate on such changes and suggest ways and means to leverage this growing interest in India and identify the new perspectives emerging in Business, Management, Leadership and Consciousness as a result of these changes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The schedule for 8th IBA International Conference can be accessed <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w4qJMW1CRor7v3qwifu3yoDlpezQAzsC64To7blxRPY/pubhtml"><span>here</span></a>. More info on the event <a class="external-link" href="http://iba.ac.in/8th-iba-international-conference/">here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/8th-iba-international-conference'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/8th-iba-international-conference</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaKannada Wikipedia2016-04-04T15:32:54ZNews ItemCommunity Digest—Estonians working on a new feedback system for Wikipedia articles
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-community-digest-estonians-working-on-new-feedback-system-for-wikipedia-articles
<b>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.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Read the original published on Wikimedia Blog <a class="external-link" href="http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/13/wikicomment-kannada-anniversary/">here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sites that rely on the cooperation of people need to be able to easily exchange information. When there are some problems with an article, you could always add some templates to specific places or point to them on talk page—but that can sometimes be painful and time consuming.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The problem can grow even greater when articles are written inside a <a rel="mw:ExtLink" href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education"><span>Wikipedia Education Program</span></a>. You may need to follow up with hundreds of students and provide them feedback so that they can easily understand what should they fix. This can be a rather tricky job when dealing with people who have never before written to Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For example, in Estonia we have a course called “Estonian Composition and Conversation” in the <a title="w:en:University of Tartu" rel="mw:ExtLink" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:University%20of%20Tartu"><span>University of Tartu</span></a>, where there are on average more than 200 students per year writing articles on Wikipedia. We are keenly interested in providing good quality feedback, but with that number of students and with the use of the usual wikisystem, that is hard to achieve.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So we needed a solution.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When using the usual method (the talk page), you need to point out where are all of the mistakes located and then express your concerns about them. With a lot of comments, that does get rather messy and it’s hard to understand where are those comments directed to; it’s not an ideal medium for feedback in massive scale and not that useful for neither the students nor the person giving feedback. So the goal was simple: to ease the process of giving feedback to students who write wikiarticles as their coursework.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What we did was to create a system called <strong><a rel="mw:ExtLink" href="http://wikicomment.ut.ee/"><span>WikiComment</span></a></strong>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What does it do? Well, at first it allows to add comments to exact letters/sentences/paragraphs to speed up the commenting process and make it easier to locate the issues. In addition to adding comments, it also provides various highlighting options and a possibility to strike through text. Secondly, it allows for better monitoring of the articles of interest. That means the wikiComment user has information about which pages have been modified and he or she can easily check if the changes have solved the marked questions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We hope that this will make it easier to focus on text and to the quality of writing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Obviously WikiComment could be used outside the education initiative and in many other ways as well, but that is just how it all started. For example we’ll soon add support for sites like Meta-Wiki, Wikisource, Wikivoyage, Wikinews, and Wikiquote, among others. Having a discussion about some details in grant request or talking about local tourist sites may have just become easier. But to really optimize the system and to make it as good as possible we’ll need your feedback, so please go on and test that site—if you have any suggestions, just <a href="http://wikicomment.ut.ee/"><span>let us know</span></a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i><a title="User:Kruusamägi" rel="mw:WikiLink" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kruusam%C3%A4gi"><span>Ivo Kruusamägi</span></a>, Estonian Wikipedian</i></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">In brief</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Kannada Wikipedia anniversary</strong>: The <a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/" target="_blank"><span>Kannada Wikipedia</span></a> is all set to celebrate its 13th anniversary. The <a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1" target="_blank"><span>first ever edit</span></a> on Kannada Wikipedia was made on 12 June 2003 with a message “Kannada Vishwa Koshakke Suswaagatha!” (meaning welcome to the Kannada encyclopedia in Kannada). However, it took over a year—on July 12, 2004 the first article about a city <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimoga" target="_blank"><span>Shimoga</span></a> <a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E0%B2%B6%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%B5%E0%B2%AE%E0%B3%8A%E0%B2%97%E0%B3%8D%E0%B2%97&oldid=1463" target="_blank"><span>was created</span></a>. Over the last decade Kannada Wikipedia has been a great gamechanger for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannada" target="_blank"><span>Kannada language</span></a> where the Wikipedians have played a great role in making it a household name—there were about <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kannada_Wikipedia_stats_%28December_2015%29.png" target="_blank"><span>700,000 pageviews</span></a> in December 2015. The annual average of active editors for last year was 48, 91 (February) being the highest and 22 (May) the lowest and 80 being the count in last December. The peaks and valleys also signify that major outreach like <a href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Countries/India/Christ_University/CUWEP2015_NOVEMBER" target="_blank"><span>Wikipedia Education Program at Christ University Bengaluru</span></a> could have boosted the total number of editors during the months when the program was being rolled out. Since its inception, the project has gone through many ups and downs over time, the major one being a small community to edit and curate such a high level task of creating new articles in Kannada, editing and enriching them with more information and citations, and cleaning up many articles.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The biggest hurdle, as <a href="http://www.hpnadig.net/blog/2011/10/22/how-google-irreparably-wounded-kannada-wikipedia/755" target="_blank"><span>explained</span></a> by Wikimedian <a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:HPNadig" target="_blank"><span>Hari Prasad Nadig</span></a>, has been cleaning up the articles created by paid translations of Google when Kannada Wikipedia along with many other Indian language Wikipedias were used as testing grounds for improving <a href="http://translate.google.com/" target="_blank"><span>Google Translate</span></a>, a multilingual machine translation tool. <a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:VASANTH_S.N." target="_blank"><span>Vasanth S.N.</span></a>, a Kannada Wikipedian who has cleaned up over 60 such articles prefers to use an existing good quality encyclopedia like the 16 volume Kannada Vishwakosha, published by Mysore University and relicensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 by the university, as a resource to create and improve articles. To celebrate the journey of the project and the community, Kannada Wikipedians are gathering at Saint Aloysius College Mangalore, Karnataka this 14th. The larger community, including long time Wikipedians and new members like the students faculty involved in Wikipedia Education Programs, will <a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/s/1daf"><span>gather and participate</span></a> in a day-long edit-a-thon and chalk out plans for the future.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Innovation and revolution in the Odia language</strong>: Wikimedian Subhashish Panigrahi has <a class="text external" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report-this-little-innovation-is-bringing-a-revolution-in-the-odia-language-2173325"><span>written</span></a> two pieces recently. In dnaindia.com, he described a Unicode converter that in revolutionizing Internet access in the Odia language; in the <i>Huffington Post</i>, he <a class="text external" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.in/subhashish-panigrahi-/when-wikipedia-is-turning_b_9025690.html"><span>wrote</span></a> about why contributing and adding to Wikipedias in Indian language is so important.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Coming together across the divide</strong>: <a title="Saanjh" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Saanjh"><span>Saanjh</span></a> (ਸਾਂਝ سانجھ), a Punjabi word which means collaboration, was an online edit-a-thon between the <a title="pa:ਮੁੱਖ ਸਫ਼ਾ" class="extiw" 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"><span>Gurmukhi Punjabi Wikipedia</span></a> and <a title="pnb:پہلا صفہ" class="extiw" href="https://pnb.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%BE%DB%81%D9%84%D8%A7_%D8%B5%D9%81%DB%81"><span>Shahmukhi Punjabi Wikipedia</span></a> in January 2016. The plan came together after two editors, one from each side, met at Wikimania 2015. Organized by the <a title="m:Punjabi Wikimedians" class="extiw" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_Wikimedians"><span>Punjabi Wikimedians User Group</span></a>, 23 editors participated; you can read more about their story <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Drafts/Saanjh_-_Step_towards_a_Global_Punjab"><span>on Meta</span></a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a title="User:Psubhashish" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Psubhashish"><span><i>Subhashish Panigrahi</i></span></a><i>, Wikimedian and Programme Officer, </i><a title="m:CIS-A2K" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K"><span><i>Access to Knowledge</i></span></a><i> (CIS-A2K), Centre for Internet and Society<br /></i><i><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ed_Erhart_%28WMF%29"><span>Ed Erhart</span></a></i><i>, Editorial Associate, Wikimedia Foundation</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-community-digest-estonians-working-on-new-feedback-system-for-wikipedia-articles'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-community-digest-estonians-working-on-new-feedback-system-for-wikipedia-articles</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaWikimediaCIS-A2KWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-02-27T06:30:41ZBlog EntryCultural institution AKA GLAM for more OER
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cultural-institution-aka-glam-for-more-oer
<b>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. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) is a global initiative for making cultural data open targeting galleries, libraries, archives and museums in particular. GLAM projects are run in collaboration with these cultural institutions where the artifacts and other institutional collections get all sorts of digital treatment, from digitizing manuscripts and <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/National_Library_and_National_Archives_of_the_Netherlands/Data#Books">books</a> to creating meta data and developing tools to automate and <a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:GLAMwiki_Toolset_Project">ease the life of contributors</a>, building and 3D models of artifacts and creating multilingual <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/NHMandSM/Virtual_Museum">virtual museum experience</a> by using Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These institutions historically being the reservoir of knowledge need more attention with more digital innovation coming in day by day. There being a synergy between the fundamental focus of OER and GLAM initiative, it leaves scholars and GLAM and/or OER practitioners to explore this area that is currently not widely covered. GLAM projects are centered around data mining, digitizing and publishing the work in both machine and human readable forms. The output of all the GLAM projects could directly contribute to creating OERs classifying and customizing the OERs for different age groups and people with accessibility needs. This, in return will also benefit the GLAM projects and institutions for both expanding their reach and replicating these initiatives. The presentation will be around the best practices of several GLAM initiatives and how these projects could lead to create useful OERs. I will also shed some light on the methodology of creating OERs during the development of a GLAM project.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cultural-institution-aka-glam-for-more-oer'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cultural-institution-aka-glam-for-more-oer</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaWikimediaCIS-A2KWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-02-27T06:00:20ZBlog EntryBooks at a Click
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/new-indian-express-january-9-2016-diana-sahu-books-at-a-click
<b>The OdiaWikimedia community and Bhubaneswar-based Srujanika have come together to make rare science books available online for readers, students & science educators.
</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The article by Diana Sahu was <a class="external-link" href="http://epaper.newindianexpress.com/m/687837/The-New-Indian-Express-Bhubaneswar/09012016#issue/18/1">published in the New Indian Express</a> on January 9, 2016.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">Readers can now access rare science books in Odia language at Odia Wikisource, an online library of popular books in the language. The Odia Wikimedia community and Bhubaneswar-based Srujanika have come together to make these books available online for readers, students and science educators. This apart, books of Sahitya Akademi award winning writer Jagannath Prasad Das have been added to the library. Srujanika's co-founder Puspashree Pattnaik recently provided 700 popular science books that were published by the organisation to the Wikimedia community for digitisation. “These books were appreciated by many and even in demand after going out of print. Hence, we thought if these can be shared under free licence then they can reach a wider population. Wikipedia contributors can use these as resources and enhance science content in Odia Wikipedia as well", says Puspashree, a former teacher. She along with her husband Nikhil Pattnaik, a former scientist with the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, had published several science books as part of their project to popularise the subject among children. With support from Vigyan Prasar in New Delhi, the couple had also documented rare works of science published in books, magazines, periodicals and newspapers from 1850 to 1950 in electronic format, a few years back. Around science 765 articles written over a century have been put on CDs and DVDs according to the names of authors and year of publication. The science books have been digitised by volunteers of the Odia Wikimedia community and the Centre for Internet and Society, a non-profit working for supporting Indian language Wikipedia projects and the communities.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Pushpashree Pattnaik</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Similarly, the Wikimedia community has re-licensed 30 books of Das under a free license CC-by-SA 4.0. His books can now be accessed at https://orwikisource.org and anyone can use them for academic or research work. “My tryst with internet started very late. I was introduced to digital books through Srujanika's online version of Purnachandra Odia Bhashakosha - comprising 9,500 pages in seven volumes- which was impossible to handle on the writing table. That made me think how convenient it would be to have Odia books avail. able on the internet. As a beginning. I decided to put my own writings on the internet", said Das. Prior to Das, eminent writers and litterateurs Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Manoj Panda, Subrat Prusty, Bharat Majhi and organisations like 'Manik Biswanath Smrutinyasa' and Aama Odisha' had come forward to make their books available online for free using Odia Wikisource as a platform. At present, Odia Wikisource has 280 Odia books and all are either under Public Domain or Creative Commons Share Alike licences. A team of 10 active contributors, known as "Uikiali' in Odia, are digitising books of various genres ranging from science writing, fiction to 0dia classics. “Apart from the science writ. ings, we are also working on digitising the biography of Nandini Satpathy which has been published by Ashisa Ranjan Mohapatra of Srimati Nandini Satpathy Memorial Trust,” says Mrutyunjaya Kar, administrator of Odia Wikisource and Odia Wikipedia who has been contributing to the Wikimedia projects in Odia, Hindi, Sanskrit and English for the last four years. Odia Wikisource is a sister project of Odia Wikipedia.</p>
<p class="callout">These books were appreciated by many and going out of print. If these can be shared under free licence then they can reach a wider population.<br /><strong>Pushpashree Pattnaik</strong></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/new-indian-express-january-9-2016-diana-sahu-books-at-a-click'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/new-indian-express-january-9-2016-diana-sahu-books-at-a-click</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOdia WikisourceOdia Wikipedia2016-06-18T17:52:06ZNews ItemWikipedia initiative - Celebrating legacy of Bangalore Blue grapes online
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/times-of-india-january-27-2016-wikipedia-initiative
<b>Black is beautiful, and it can go places if it is well researched. When HL Omshivaprakash wrote a Wikipedia article about Karnataka's bidriware, the metal handicraft where gleaming black bowls and hookahs are dotted with delicate silver strips, he didn't expect it to be picked up by the French and Swedes.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Read the article <a class="external-link" href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/Wikipedia-initiative-Celebrating-legacy-of-Bangalore-Blue-grapes-online/articleshow/50739468.cms">published in the Times of India here</a>. Subhashish Panigrahi gave inputs.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">His article has now been translated into their languages. Though it might not lead to more money for the struggling artists of Bidar, they might get an edge while marketing their wares, says Omshivaprakash. This is the advantage that a week-long editathon hopes to achieve. Editors of the online encyclopaedia are celebrating Republic Day by encouraging people to upgrade and contribute articles on those arts, crafts and goods unique to various parts of India. "People are already working on 15 products from Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal," says Subhashish Panigrahi, Wikipedian and language activist.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India has 213 goods and crafts with geographical indication (GIs) tags. The GI mark is a kind of trademark, which indicates that a product's reputation is linked to its origins in a particular area. Of 213 GI tags, only 70 have English entries. So while intricacies of Muga silk-making in Assam and cultivating Bangalore Blue grapes are explained in detail in English, Alleppey coir has only a sketchy Malayalam entry.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"People should know the history of each item. For example, they should know how Kondapalli toys from near Vijayawada are made,"says Nageswara Rao Gullapalli.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Omshivaprakash, who created a signboard outside Bidar Fort last year, with a QR code that allows users to read the relevant wiki entry on their mobile phones, says a change in design can make a difference."The QR code was etched in bidri to create a socio-economic link between readers and artisans. Though the art is expensive, the artists are not paid well,"he says.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is this desire to unearth new facts that will see Santosh Shinga, an IIT-B researcher, delving deep into Nagpur oranges, Nashik grapes and Mahabaleshwar strawberries. "I am from Nagpur and interested in fruits,"says Shinga, who knows a bit of orange farming.The only exception in his list is Puneri pagadi, the elaborate headgear recently spotted on actor Ranveer Singh in Bollywood movie 'Bajirao Mastani'.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Panigrahi hopes to finish the edits in English by January 30, right in time when the event wraps up by January 31. Karnataka, which tops the list with 30 GI goods, has only a handful of articles and images, says Panigrahi.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/times-of-india-january-27-2016-wikipedia-initiative'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/times-of-india-january-27-2016-wikipedia-initiative</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaWikimediaCIS-A2KWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-01-29T15:44:36ZNews ItemGI-tagged products to get Wiki pages
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/the-hindu-s-anandan-january-26-2016-gi-tagged-products-to-get-wiki-pages
<b>Ever realised that the famous, red hot Naga Mirchi (a special variety of chilli from Nagaland) doesn’t have a Wikipedia page?</b>
<p>The article by S. Anandan was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Kochi/gitagged-products-to-get-wiki-pages/article8153825.ece">published in the Hindu</a> on January 26, 2016.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">And that Cannanore Home Furnishings — textile home furnishings from Kannur — is a brand with geographical indication (GI) registration? Wiki, which is an open and free repository of knowledge on the Internet, does not have pages, in English and other recognised Indian languages, on most GI-tagged Indian products.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Centre for Internet and Society-Access to Knowledge — popular as CIS-A2K— which is a not-for-profit movement to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development, launched an India Edit-a-thon for seven days from January 25 to generate Wikimedia pages in English and Indian languages on Indian products recognised by the GI Registry of India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Kerala alone boasts 23 products, mostly agricultural, with the GI tag. But Malayalam Wiki doesn’t have information on all of them. Besides the Aranmula Kannadi, none of the other GI-tagged products from Kerala have Wiki pages in English. Nationally, there are about 213 GI-tagged products and we know nothing of most of them. There isn’t a single article on many of them even in English. It’s in this context that the Edit-a-thon becomes extremely relevant. It’s being held to celebrate the Republic Day,” says Wiki activist Manoj Karingamadathil.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">13 pages already</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The campaign, launched on Monday, has evoked enthusiastic response from Wiki activists who have begun to create pages on most of these products. At the time of going to press, 13 GI-tagged Kerala products have got Wiki pages and editors are at work to generate content for these products in English.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Apart from existing Wiki editors, freshers may also be part of the campaign. “All they have to do is to create a Wiki account before sending in researched content,” points out Mr. Manoj. The campaign will be on till January 31.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Seven-day India Edit-a-thon begins; Wiki activists begin creating pages.</b></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/the-hindu-s-anandan-january-26-2016-gi-tagged-products-to-get-wiki-pages'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/the-hindu-s-anandan-january-26-2016-gi-tagged-products-to-get-wiki-pages</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaWikimediaCIS-A2KWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-01-27T16:33:47ZNews ItemThis Multilingual Edit-a-thon wants to Improve Indian Content on Wikipedia
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/this-multilingual-edit-a-thon-wants-to-improve-indian-content-on-wikipedia
<b>Ever wondered how many articles the Kannada Wikipedia or the Hindi Wikipedia have relating to India, its social history, literary and cultural heritage and the journey of over 1600 languages? </b>
<p> </p>
<p>The article was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report-this-multilingual-edit-a-thon-wants-to-improve-indian-content-on-wikipedia-2170545">published in DNA</a> on January 26, 2016.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;">India has over <strong><a href="http://ipindia.nic.in/girindia/treasures_protected/registered_GI_30March2015.pdf" target="_blank">235 Geographical Indications (GI)</a></strong> spread over the length and breadth of the 29 states and 7 union territories. GI identifies goods or products as originating in a region or locality and indicates the unique characteristic or particular qualities it has as a result of being made in that area. Out of India's 235 GI, as identified by the Geographical Indications Registry of the Government of India, there exist only about 70 English Wikipedia entries. The state of many Indian language Wikipedias is even worse where a vast majority of the identified GIs and other important topics related to art, craft, cuisine, culture, attire and tradition are missing from Wikipedia. Even Karnataka, which has the maximum number of GIs at 30, has only a handful of articles and a few images on Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This Republic Day, 75 Wikipedia editors who are volunteers and represent 18 Indic languages are coming together online to show their patriotism in a unique way. It is not by hoisting the tri-colour and talking about India's glorious past, but by enhancing Wikipedia content related to the GIs of India in their own languages. Those who are multilingual are even going to create Wikipedia articles in two or three different languages. The multilingual edit-a-thon started on January 25 and will go on until January 31. The event is focused on improving existing Wikipedia content related to GIs of India, translating them into Indic languages and also creating new articles. Being an online event, it has also opened up the door to many contributors outside India. A few participants from Nepal and Bangladesh have signed up for the event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">So little of the great journey of our products with unique quality is available in the public domain. The saddest part is that there is literally a bottom level existence for content related to Indian GIs on Wikipedia, the world's largest online encyclopedia, which is often the first link a web search throws up. This sort of lack of access to knowledge related to India is not new. Even outside of Wikipedia, there is very less that exists about the many stories worth telling from our country. However, crying over the low access to knowledge would never solve the real problem.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Geographical_Indications_in_India_Edit-a-thon" target="_blank">This edit-a-</a><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Geographical_Indications_in_India_Edit-a-thon" target="_blank">thon</a> </strong>is just a digital experiment but can be a great way of doing digital activism for the preservation of languages and taking the uniqueness of India to millions of people in their own languages.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/this-multilingual-edit-a-thon-wants-to-improve-indian-content-on-wikipedia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/this-multilingual-edit-a-thon-wants-to-improve-indian-content-on-wikipedia</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaEdit-a-thon2016-01-28T07:23:09ZBlog EntryWhy It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/huffington-post-subhashish-panigrahi-january-25-2016-why-its-essential-to-grow-indian-language-wikipedias
<b>On 15 January, Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia celebrated its 15th birthday, meeting this milestone with 36 million articles in more than 290 languages (the English-language Wikipedia alone has crossed the 5-million article mark). But here I want to address some major questions that we need to ask as Indians. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This was published by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.in/subhashish-panigrahi-/when-wikipedia-is-turning_b_9025690.html">Huffington Post</a> on January 25, 2016. Also mirrored on <a class="external-link" href="https://globalvoices.org/2016/02/26/why-its-essential-to-grow-indian-language-wikipedias/">Global Voices</a> on February 26, 2016. The post was translated <a class="external-link" href="https://el.globalvoices.org/2016/05/33834">into Greek</a> by Maria Souli. It was translated <a class="external-link" href="https://es.globalvoices.org/2016/03/26/la-importancia-de-cultivar-las-wikipedias-sobre-los-idiomas-de-la-india/">into Spanish</a> by Daniela Diaz and <a class="external-link" href="https://ru.globalvoices.org/2016/04/20/47945/">into Russian</a> by GV Russian</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">First, what is the state of Indian-language Wikipedia projects? What does India have to take from and give to Wikipedia?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With the growth of free and open source software in India, <a href="http://www.gndec.ac.in/%7Elibrarian/sveri/dbit2306009.pdf" target="_hplink">people are equipped with more freedom than ever.</a> Especially with the recent <a href="https://opensource.com/government/15/6/indian-government-includes-open-source-rfps" target="_hplink">federal policy-level changes</a>, the nation is enjoying better collaboration with people of different cultures speaking different languages.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; ">According to UNESCO, 197 of the total of 1652 Indian languages are dying despite having a long literary and linguistic heritage.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, there is a huge gap in the access to knowledge on the internet domain. Of a population of about 1.26 billion only about 15-18% people are connected online, largely from mobile devices. A tiny fraction of this population comprises the technical community. It would be useful to have a metric on the percentage of this community's contribution to grow the languages of this country and its cultural heritage.</p>
<h3>Wikipedia as a family</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Wikipedia is not just an encyclopaedia. It is also a "family" of several other Open Knowledge members. Wikipedia itself is available in over 290 languages, but it also has other multilingual sister projects such as Wikisource (an online library of many public domain and other important texts), Wikimedia Commons (the world's largest repository of media files and documents), Wikibooks (a free library of educational textbooks), Wikivoyage (a free and open travel guide) and Wiktionary (a database of various languages).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These projects don't just house millions of images, videos, documents and texts, but allow anyone to contribute their knowledge to this ever deepening pool of information. Four Indian languages made an early entry to the Wiki-world back in 2002 -- <a href="http://as.wikipedia.org/" target="_hplink">Assamese</a>, <a href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/" target="_hplink">Malayalam</a>, <a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/" target="_hplink">Odia</a> and <a href="http://pa.wikipedia.org/" target="_hplink">Punjabi</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/UNESCO.png" alt="UNESCO" class="image-inline" title="UNESCO" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Language neutrality</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">According to UNESCO, 197 of the total of 1652 Indian languages are dying despite having a long literary and linguistic heritage. It's quite shocking. In a blog post on content localisation, social entrepreneur Rajesh Ranjan asks if free and open source software can help save these dying languages. In the context of Wikipedia, there are already 23 South Asian-language projects. Out of these 20 are languages listed in the 8th schedule of the Constitution of India. Many might not have noticed that the "en" in the URL of Wikipedia that denotes the language code of English could be altered with "or" for Odia Wikipedia or "pa" for Punjabi Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Most Wikipedia projects in Indian language projects are relatively small compared to their counterparts. But the Wikimedia communities are thriving.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; ">There are a fairly large number of native speakers waiting out there to access knowledge in their own languages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When only parts of government websites are available in Hindi, the Hindi Wikipedia has crossed 10 million articles already. The Tamil and Malayalam Wikipedia communities have played a central part in implementing Wikipedia basics learning in the state-run school syllabus. Needless to say that these communities have played a significant role in implementing several free and open source software by pushing for policy-level change. Many Indian languages are in the pipeline to become active Wikipedia projects under the scope of the <a href="https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Incubator:Test_wikis/code/valid" target="_hplink">Wikimedia Incubator</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/09/08/a-focused-approach-for-maithili-wikipedia/" target="_hplink">Maithili Wikipedia</a> and <a href="http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/07/15/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live/" target="_hplink">Goan Konkani Wikipedia</a> are the two Indian-language Wikipedias that have gone live in recent years. The world has seen how digital activism has brought a new life to the Hebrew language. There are a fairly large number of native speakers waiting out there to access knowledge in their own languages. Wikipedia could be a great tool for digital activism with openness and sharing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/WikipediaEditors.png" alt="Wikipedia Editors" class="image-inline" title="Wikipedia Editors" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Addressing gender bias in Wikipedia: Implications for India</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/gender-inequality-index-in-south-asia-india-leads-in-poor-condition-of-women/" target="_hplink">tops South Asia in the gender inequality index</a> in the entire South Asia. The <a href="http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2009/en/pdf/EN_SOWP09_ICPD.pdf" target="_hplink">female literacy rate is an alarmingly low 65.46%</a> as compared to 82.14% for men. This disparity is evident in many other sectors as well as in politics.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; ">Digital India aims at digital literacy and availability of digital resources/services in Indian languages. This is closely aligned with the Wikimedia movement's goal....</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But gender bias is not just a problem in India. The global free and open source software (FOSS) community has always been worried about the <a href="https://books.google.co.in/books?id=AJpACwAAQBAJ&pg=PT49&lpg=PT49&dq=gender+bias+in+foss+community&source=bl&ots=HqLdhzKwcD&sig=bewvZdJG3wGtbqWXxSIS9qLIxSM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjkwfznvqTKAhVKH44KHZFVBMQQ6AEIJzAB#v=onepage&q=gender%20bias%20in%20foss%20community&f=false" target="_hplink">low presence of women</a> contributors -- in the <a href="https://people.cs.umass.edu/%7Ewallach/talks/2011-04-05_JHU.pdf" target="_hplink">range of 2-5% range.</a> Wikimedia Foundation's former executive director admitted that Wikipedia, like many other collaborative and open projects, does not have a conducive environment for women. But the Wikimedia community and Wikimedia Foundation are both working on improving this state of affairs. Indian-language Wikipedia projects are directly impacted by this global drive, be it the Women's History Month edit-a-thon where Wikipedia content largely related to women are improved every year or the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lilavati%27s_Daughters_Edit-a-thon" target="_hplink">Lilavati's Daughters project </a>where biographies of Indian women scientists were created and enriched in Wikipedia projects.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Complementing Digital India</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With a population of over <a href="http://dazeinfo.com/2015/09/05/internet-users-in-india-number-mobile-iamai/" target="_hplink">354 million</a> netizens India still has a long way to go in <a href="http://tdil.mit.gov.in/wsi/papers/Issues_&_Challenges_for_Enabling_Mobile_web_in_Indian_Languages.pdf" target="_hplink">increasing Indian language content on the web</a>. The Government of India's new campaign <a href="http://www.digitalindia.gov.in/content/vision-and-vision-areas" target="_hplink">Digital India</a> aims at <a href="http://www.cmai.asia/digitalindia/" target="_hplink">digital literacy and availability of digital resources/services in Indian languages</a>. This is closely aligned with the Wikimedia movement's goal to provide free access to the sum of all human knowledge. In addition to Wikipedia, many other open educational resources and free knowledge projects that are not already a part of the Digital India campaign signal the need for the federal-run campaign to be more collaborative and open. Community-government collaborations like the <a href="https://blog.creativecommons.org/2013/08/14/india-launches-national-repository-of-open-educational-resources/" target="_hplink">NROER project</a> to make NCERT books under Creative Commons licenses and <a href="https://www.itschool.gov.in/glance.php" target="_hplink">IT@School project</a> in the state of Kerala to provide education using free and open tools have gained massive traction and helped more Indian language content come online.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/huffington-post-subhashish-panigrahi-january-25-2016-why-its-essential-to-grow-indian-language-wikipedias'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/huffington-post-subhashish-panigrahi-january-25-2016-why-its-essential-to-grow-indian-language-wikipedias</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaWikimediaCIS-A2KWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-05-28T06:52:53ZBlog Entry