Dear All,
CIS-A2K had a two day meeting with WMF & FDC visiting team in its Bangalore office on 11th & 12th Feb 2014. The main agenda of the meeting was:
Understanding current state of A2K -- basic facts (finance snapshot, organizational context within CIS)
Financial review of CIS-A2K, per grant agreement
Reflection on past year - successes and challenges in activities
Reflection on past year - spending vs. plan
Discussion of the preparation for funding via the FDC process; Q&A
Reflection on relationship with various communities - successes; obstacles; gaps
Discussion of A2K's current resources: staff, funds, engaged volunteers; discuss actual plans; discuss path according to roadmap
Meeting minutes can be found here.[1]
Thanks
Nitika
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Meetings/Minutes_…
Dear friends,
I am pleased to inform you that today the Urdu Wikipedia has crossed the
50,000 articles mark.
I am honoured to be a humble contributor of this Wikipedia which has
reached a dream milestone which is yet to be covered by many other
Wikipedias.
The focus, as the community feels, will now shift on referencing and
elaborating many of the existing articles to satisfactory levels.
Also, the next target is to cross the 1,00,000 articles mark.
Regards,
Muzammil.
namaste,
It is with great pleasure that we announce the re-release of first 6 volumes
of Kannada Encyclopaedia published by Mysore University under Creative
Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0.
CIS-A2K has been following up with the Mysore University since months
requesting them to re-release the encyclopaedia under CC. Being convinced of
the importance of preserving the rich culture and heritage of Kannada,
Mysore University has approved the conversion into Unicode and re-release of
the encyclopaedia under CC to make it freely available to Kannadigas all
over the world.
This is a great achievement for CIS-A2K programme and Wikimedia India
community. We are extremely thankful to Prof. K. S. Rangappa,
Vice-Chancellor of Mysore University for realising the importance of growing
free and open knowledge in Kannada. Thanks are also due to the Mysore
University faculty and officials, specifically Prof. S. Ravi (Director,
PMEB), Prof C. Basavaraju (Ex Registrar), Prof. N. M. Talawar (Director,
Institute of Kannada Studies), Prof Hati Krishne Gowda (then Chief Editor of
Mysore University Encyclopaedia project) and others.
CIS-A2K will be converting the encyclopaedia into Unicode and uploading it
on Kannada Wikisource; that will feed into articles on Kannada Wikipedia.
Thanks and regards,
Pavanaja
U.B. Pavanaja, MSc, PhD
Programme Officer <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pavanaja> - Indian
languages,
Access to Knowledge program
The Centre for Internet & Society
Dear All,
It’s with deep regret that we announce the exit of Muzammiluddin Syed as Programme Officer CIS-A2K due to his personal reasons. Muzammil has been a great asset to the A2K team. CIS would like to thank him for all his valuable contributions to the Wikimedia movement and particularly helping grow Hindi and Urdu Wikimedia projects and community. During his stint at CIS Muzammil also put in concerted efforts to grow the partnership at Christ University. We're hoping that he'll continue to be a part of the movement as a treasured volunteer and we wish him the best in life.
In another context, CIS is happy to share that Rahimanuddin Shaik who was brought on board to work as Community Communications Consultant at CIS-A2K for 3 months will now continue as Programme Officer in lieu of Muzammil. Hence no separate hiring process will be undertaken for this position. In a short period of time Rahim has done some amazing work including building Telugu Wikipedia work plan for next year. Please join us in congratulating him and wishing him success in his new role.
Thanks
Nitika
Dear Wikimedians,
CIS-A2K is glad to share with you the news about the re-release of the
below listed 14 books (13 Odia and 1 English) under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license
during the Odisha Day 2014 [1] celebration in Bhubaneswar. This has been
done in collaboration with the Odia Wikipedia community, Manik Biswanath
Smrutinyasa and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS). As some of
you may know KISS is one our institutional partners.
1) 11 Odia books by noted writer and academic Dr. Jagannath Mohanty (we
partnered Manik Biswanath Smrutinyasa Trust, founded by Dr. Mohanty for
the re-release)
2) 2 scholarly books on Odia language by Odia language scholar Subrat
Prusty from Institute of Odia Studies and Research.
3) Classical Odia (in English) co-authored by noted linguist Padmashree
Debiprasanna Pattanayak and Subrat Prusty.
We have also managed to get significant media coverage for this event,
which has got 14 print and web media mentions. [2] We will continue to
bring much more Odia content under free license as per our next year's
Odia Wikipedia work plan [3] and will try to use it to make the Odia
Wikisource live [4].
1. https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OD14
2. http://goo.gl/s8gvLl
3.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Draft_Work_plan_J…
4.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Draft_Work_plan_J…
Best,
Subhashish Panigrahi
Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge
Centre for Internet and Society
http://cis-india.org
@psubhashish