Dear all,
Keeping with Assamese wikisource's effort of digitalizing old books, '
Sarothi <https://as.wikisource.org/wiki/Sarothi>' written by eminent
author Satyanath
Bora <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyanath_Bora> (1860-1925) has now been
scanned and converted to Unicode format.
'Sarothi' which means 'guide' was published in 1915 contains 34 essays.
Divided into four segments, the topics of the essays are 'Aim in life',
'Education', 'Work', 'Exercise' etc. Those are all meant to help people
conquer their struggles and succeed in life. Dr. Maheswar Neog and Dr.
Satyendranath Sarma compared the writing style of Satyanth Bora in
'Sarothi' to that of English essayist Francis Bacon.
--
*~~ গীতাৰ্থ বৰদলৈ (Gitartha Bordoloi)*
Dear all,
Below is the details of the activities by the Centre for Internet and
Society's Access To Knowledge program (CIS-A2K).
Andhra Loyola College and the Centre for Internet & Society sign MoU for
Better Net Access
Andhra Loyola College (ALC) and the Centre for Internet and Society's
Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) have entered into a memorandum of
understanding (MoU) to steward the growth of Telugu Wikipedia and to make
available free knowledge in Telugu to all Telugus across the globe.
Highlights:
* Ten theosophical books authored by Rev. Fr. P. Jojaiah, SJ released under
free license (CC-BY-SA-4.0).
* For the first time an educational institution in the state of Andhra
Pradesh is signing an MoU with CIS-A2K to work collaboratively to
qualitatively improve Telugu Wikipedia.
* ALC faculty and students to create free e-content in Telugu on Telugu
Wikipedia.
* Digital content from the fields of Botany, Physics, Chemistry, Telugu,
Statistics, Ethics and Religion, Music and Dance to be produced on Telugu
Wikipedia.
Blog Entries:
* We are Wikipedia (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Global Voices Online, June 18,
2014): http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/we-are-wikipedia
* OpenGLAM at Wikimania 2014 (by Subhashish Panigrahi, OpenGlam, August 27,
2014):
http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/open-glam-august-27-2014-subhashish-pani…
News and Media Coverage:
CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:
* Now, Christ students will contribute to Wikipedia (by H.M.Shruthi, Deccan
Herald, August 5, 2014):
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/deccan-herald-shruthi-august-5-2014-now-c…
* CIS-A2K Signs MoU with Andhra Loyola College in Vijayawada (Eenadu,
August 15, 2014):
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/cis-mou-with-alc-coverage-in-een…
* ALC signs MoU for better net access (The Hindu, August 15, 2014):
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-august-15-2014-alc-signs-mou-fo…
Wikimedia Foundation has funded A2K to anchor the growth of Wikimedia
movement in India. The A2K team consists of six members, four based in
Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and
Rahmanuddin Shaikh. One team member Nitika Tandon has left from the
organisation -- We wish Nitika all the best for her career. We also have
one Advisor Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana working with us. Archives of our
newsletters can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.
Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs,
technical bugs, logistics-merchandise and media, public relations and
communications at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Requests
About CIS:
Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that
works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy,
accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR
reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards,
etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital
humanities.Follow us elsewhere
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
CIS group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cis.india
Visit us at: https://cis-india.org
Request for Collaboration:
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both
organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with
Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To
discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive
Director, at sunil(a)cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at
nishant(a)cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language
wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at
vishnu(a)cis-india.org.CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust
founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin
for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also
grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation,
Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC
for funding its various projects.
This bulletin is also available on Meta-wiki at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_to_Knowledge/Newsletter/August…
Thank you all for your kind support and collaboration!
Subhashish Panigrahi
Access To Knowledge
Centre for Internet and Society
@psubhashish
Dear all,
It has been more than one and half years since Assamese wikisource got its
own sub-domain. Creating pages by a few members were going at a steady
rate, but it needed a boost in the form of digitalization of copyright free
books by scanning and collaborative typing. It took a while to get going
due to some unavoidable circumstances. At last, a book named '*Bhanumoti'*
by Padmanath Gohainbaruah (1871-1946) was scanned and uploaded to commons
on 25th August.
Though a number of his predecessors wrote a few novels, from historical and
literary point of view 'Bhanumoti' is considered by many to be the first
Assamese novel. It was first published serially in a magazine called '
*Bijulee*' in 1890-91. It was published as a book after a long gap of 17
years in 1908 (Meanwhile the novel '*Lahori*' by the same author was
published as a book in 1892). So these two novels heralded a new era in
Assamese literature. Gohainbaruah was the first president of 'Asam Sahitya
Sabha' (Assam Literary Organization) and first literary pensioner of Assam.
The typing of 'Bhanumoti' was completed within a week and after some minor
fixing the page is ready now (https://as.wikisource.org/wiki/Bhanumoti).
Kudos to the persons involved in this project and heartiest thanks to ever
helpful Shiju Alex for guiding me through the whole procedure.
Digitalization of another Assamese book is in progress now.
Regards
*~~ গীতাৰ্থ বৰদলৈ (Gitartha Bordoloi)*
FYI
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jayanta Nath <jayanta(a)wikimedia.in>
Date: Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 10:45 PM
Subject: Wikimedia India Chapter: Current state of affairs
To: wmin-members(a)googlegroups.com
Cc: "Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia." <
wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Dear Wikimedia India Chapter members and other interested stakeholders in
the list,
Dear members,
The Executive committee of Wikimedia India has held an emergency
teleconference on their official DSNL channel on 31 Aug 2014. As salient
items on the agenda, the following topics were discussed and decided upon:
1. Earlier, Radhakrishna Arvapally, a senior chapter member and former
Chair of Bangalore SIG, was co-opted by an emergency resolution. The
resolution was passed unanimously. The resolution had also proposed another
senior member. However, due to heavy personal engagements, the second
nominee requested the EC to exempt from such considerations.
Radhakrishna was invited to the telecon and was officially welcomed to be
part of the EC.
2. Jayanta Nath, a senior Wikipedian from Kolkata and EC member, was
unanimously elected as the new President of the Wikimedia India Chapter.
Also, Radhakrishna Arvapally and Viswanathan Prabhakaran were elected as
the new Secretary and Treasurer of the chapter respectively.
3. Any decision about hiring is kept on hold for now. The current EC agreed
together that the opinion of the new EC (emerging through the upcoming
general elections) should also be taken on-board for a major decision like
this, since they are the ones to deal with the newly hired candidate(s)for
a longer term.
4. Another extra ordinary EC Telecon was scheduled to be conducted
tentatively on 02 September 2014, 9.00 PM to take up other urgent matters
pending for decisions.
This is for the general information for all chapter members and other
interested stakeholders.
Thank You,
Jayanta Nath
President
Wikimedia India Chapter