geni geniice@gmail.com writes
On 01/10/2007, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
On 30/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2)Literacy levels. India has a literacy rate of a bit under 70%
Out of a population of 1.14 billion [1], that leaves us a mere 798 million people. Of whom (if we take a na?ve view and assume literacy as a prerequisite) some 65 million speak English as a second language... [2]
small pool to do the writing
...and over forty million of those people have access to the internet. [3]
I don't think we're going to be short of willing writers any time soon.
Not our writers. Writers to write the local history books. Writers to write the detailed history of every train used on the Indian lines ever. Writers to write books on local football and cricket teams.
There are 22 million books in the National Library of India. Over 25% are written in Indian languages. The library receives copies of 902 newspapers and 17000-odd periodicals, and has over a million volumes of bound periodicals. [ Source http://www.nlindia.org ]
And do the states have state libraries with manuscript and periodical holdings? Well, Andhra Pradesh does, even if the library doesn't yet have a website, so quite probably they all do.
Anyway, you were saying?
Angus
On 10/1/07, Angus McLellan angusmclellan@gmail.com wrote:
geni geniice@gmail.com writes
On 01/10/2007, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
On 30/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2)Literacy levels. India has a literacy rate of a bit under 70%
Out of a population of 1.14 billion [1], that leaves us a mere 798 million people. Of whom (if we take a na?ve view and assume literacy as a prerequisite) some 65 million speak English as a second language... [2]
small pool to do the writing
...and over forty million of those people have access to the internet. [3]
I don't think we're going to be short of willing writers any time soon.
Not our writers. Writers to write the local history books. Writers to write the detailed history of every train used on the Indian lines ever. Writers to write books on local football and cricket teams.
There are 22 million books in the National Library of India. Over 25% are written in Indian languages. The library receives copies of 902 newspapers and 17000-odd periodicals, and has over a million volumes of bound periodicals. [ Source http://www.nlindia.org ]
And do the states have state libraries with manuscript and periodical holdings? Well, Andhra Pradesh does, even if the library doesn't yet have a website, so quite probably they all do.
Anyway, you were saying?
A minute after posting this, McLellan realises that the "millions" comma is lakhs, not millions. Oops.
Still, given the number of articles an enterprising Wikipedian can write from one book, the NLI should be good for umpteen million articles, and the periodicals should be good for millions more. And when those are done, there will be tens of thousands more books and journals published to write another huge heap of articles.
Angus
On 01/10/2007, Angus McLellan angusmclellan@gmail.com wrote:
There are 22 million books in the National Library of India.
2,270,954. 2.2 million
http://www.nlindia.org/useful_info.html
It helps when you release they put the commas in funny places
Over 25% are written in Indian languages. The library receives copies of 902 newspapers and 17000-odd periodicals, and has over a million volumes of bound periodicals. [ Source http://www.nlindia.org ]
118K not over 1 million
And do the states have state libraries with manuscript and periodical holdings? Well, Andhra Pradesh does, even if the library doesn't yet have a website, so quite probably they all do.
Anyway, you were saying?
Angus
2.2 million is less than a 10th of the British library holdings. While technically the British library covers a much larger land area (all the imperial records and the like) there is still a concentration on subjects within the UK (total Indian records cover only 300K documents http://www.bl.uk/collections/orientaloffice.html )
geni wrote:
2.2 million is less than a 10th of the British library holdings. While technically the British library covers a much larger land area (all the imperial records and the like) there is still a concentration on subjects within the UK (total Indian records cover only 300K documents http://www.bl.uk/collections/orientaloffice.html )
Sounds like a good argument for repatriating records to India. :-)
That might help to redress the balance for what was taken away while India was under British occupation.
Ec
On 01/10/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2,270,954. 2.2 million
Is that *all*? Somebody get WikiProject India on the line, tell them we're shutting down. There's clearly no point in us going any further. [rolls eyes]