Dear all,
We from the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K) thank you all for your support and collaboration. Below is the details of our work for the month of June: Telugu Books Re-release Under Creative Commons License
Ten Telugu Books Re-released Under CC-BY-SA 3.0 License http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/ten-telugu-books-re-released-under-cc-by-sa-license (by Rahmanuddin Shaik, June 22, 2014). For the first time in the history of Indian books, 10 Telugu books by a single author were released under Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA 3.0) on June 22, 2014 at 10 a.m. at Golden Threshold, Abids, Hyderabad. CIS-A2K has collaborated with Telugu Wikipedians in convincing Indu Gnaana Vedika to re-release 10 of their books under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license which is compatible with Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Unlike the predominant digitization efforts (which only makes scanned images available), these books will be uploaded on Telugu Wikisource http://www.te.wikisource.org/ and converted into Unicode (searchable) text. This will ensure that these books are freely read, both online and offline in various formats like PDF, epub, mobi, text, etc. This is a major milestone initiative by CIS-A2K to make the sum of all knowledge in Telugu freely available to all Telugus over the internet and is part of its Telugu language area plan https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Draft_Work_plan_July_2014_-_June_2015/Telugu . Article
1. This Twitter Account Puts a Face to the Unsung Volunteer Editors Behind Wikipedia http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/global-voices-online-june-18-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-twitter-account-puts-a-face-to-unsung-volunteer-editors-behind-wikipedia (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Global Voices, June 18, 2014).
Blog Entries
1. Twitter weekly Curation WeAreWikipedia brings one Wikipedian http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/twitter-weekly-curation-wearewikipedia-brings-one-wikipedian-every-week Every Week (by Diptiman Panigrahi, June 16, 2014). 2. Odia Language gets a new Unicode Font Converter http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/odia-language-gets-new-unicode-font-converter (by Subhashish Panigrahi, June 20, 2014).
Events Organized
1. Kannada Wikipedia Workshop for Kannada Book Lovers http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Kannada_Wikipedia_workshop_for_Kannada_Book_lovers (co-organized by Navakarnataka Publications, Bangalore, June 4, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop. 2. Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era http://cis-india.org/openness/events/knowledge-and-openness-in-digital-era (co-organized by Andhra Loyola College and CIS, Vijaywada, June 24-25, 2014).
News and Media Coverage
CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:
1. Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era: Coverage in Sakshi http://cis-india.org/news/coverage-of-event-in-vijaywada-june-25-2014-sakshi (June 25, 2014). 2. Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era: Coverage in Enadu http://cis-india.org/news/eenadu-june-25-2014-coverage-of-vijaywada-event (June 25, 2014). 3. Loyola Faculty Enlightened About Open Edn Resources http://cis-india.org/news/the-new-indian-express-june-25-2014-loyola-faculty-enlightened-about-open-edn-resources (The New Indian Express, June 25, 2014).
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 is based in Delhi. We also have one Advisor Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana working with us. Archives of our newsletters can be accessed here http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters. Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Requests. About CIS
The 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@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@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.
The same newsletter is available on Meta at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_to_Knowledge/Newsletter/June_20...