Last month, Goa University re-released a four-volume encyclopaedia, Konkani Vishwakosh under a free license. The encyclopaedia presents information about the world with an emphasis on the Konkani language, Goan culture, the folklore, history, and geography of Goa, etc.

What does the open license mean?

The Konkani Vishwakosh was relaunched under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 (Creative Commons-Attribution-Share Alike 3.0) license. The Creative Commons licenses are a legal tool for copyright owners to manage rights and permissions for their works. Under the CC-BY-SA 3.0, users are free to reuse, modify, build upon, and redistribute content from the Konkani Vishwakosh, as long as they attribute it. The same license also applies to any work created by using content from the Konkani Vishwakosh. Licensing the sources of knowledge is a way of enabling access to knowledge, especially for those who may have little or no access to it. 

Relevance to Wikipedia

One of the cornerstones of Wikipedia is the use of citations. All writing on Wikipedia must be supported by reliable and independent references. Any editor may challenge and removed unsubstantiated content on Wikipedia. The Konkani Vishwakosh could serve as a vast and versatile source of references for articles in the Konkani language Wikipedia, which is currently under incubation. Content from the Vishwakosh could go into the building of the Konkani Wikipedia as the text on Wikipedia too is available under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. 

Digitisation of Konkani Vishwakosh

The Centre for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team and Goa University together have undertaken a project to digitise the Vishwakosh over a period of two months (October and November 2013). They have made a call for volunteers to type out pages from the encyclopaedia in the Devanagri script. More about the project here.

Links to press coverage, and report of the launch event by CIS-A2K.