Dear Wikisource Community,
We are thrilled to invite you to be part of Wikimania 2025—a special celebration marking 20 years of our vibrant global community! This year's conference will be held in Nairobi, Kenya, from August 6-9, with a pre-conference on August 5. The theme, "Wikimania at 20: Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability.", reflects our commitment to building a stronger, more inclusive, and impactful future for Wikimedia projects.
As valued members of the Wikisource community, your contributions are crucial to achieving these goals. We encourage you to submit program proposals that highlight the important role Wikisource plays in preserving and sharing primary source texts. To help spark ideas, here are a few topics that may align with the conference theme:
● Strategies to expand access to rare texts, translations, and diverse languages on Wikisource.
● Case studies on how Wikisource collections have supported education, research, or cultural heritage.
● Best practices for digitization, preservation, and collaborations that ensure long-term access to primary source texts.
Your session can take any format—whether you prefer presenting onsite in Nairobi, remotely from your location, or via a pre-recorded presentation. The submission deadline is March 31, 2025. Visit the program submission site at https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2025:Program to send in your proposal.
For inquiries, comments, or assistance with your proposal, please email wikimania(a)wikimedia.org. Our team of dedicated volunteers will be happy to guide you.
Additionally, to support you in developing your proposals, the Programme Subcommittee will host a consultation hour: 📅 Today, Thursday, 20 March 🕐 13:00 UTC (Find your local time at https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1742475600) 🌐 Video Call Link: https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/84172058297 💬 Live Interpretation Available in Arabic, French, and Swahili
Let’s make Wikimania 2025 a memorable celebration of our collective achievements. We can't wait to see the inspiring proposals from the Wikisource community!
Warm regards,
Butch Bustria
https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2025:Organisers
[picked the wrong mailing list the first time, sorry for that]
This is amazing! Congrats to the team.
Magnus is raising a good point (thanks!), there is a standard API to integrate catalog into epub reader apps. It's called OPDS [1] and some Wikisource(s) publishes one [2] since a decade. However, it's not very user friendly and we never made outreach to integrate it natively into apps so it's not much used. This OPDS feed is not based on Wikidata but on metadata present inside of Wikisource.
I still think having our own Wikisource branded app is relevant for outreach and visibility, maybe building on OPDS instead of doing something bespoke would allow to reuse even more code?
Congrats again,
Thomas
[1] https://specs.opds.io/
[2] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:OPDS
>
> Le vendredi 17 janvier 2025 à 15:37, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com> a écrit :
>
> > This is great!
> >
> > Silly question: Considering that the reader app will display epub format, is there no existing (open source) epub reader app that could use Wikisource as a, well, source? I would be surprised if there is not a single app where you can set/add an API URL, we would just have to be compatible with that API spec.
> >
> > This could avoid a whole load of development and technical debt.
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 17, 2025 at 7:07 AM Bodhisattwa <bodhisattwa.rgkmc(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Hello Wikisourcerers,
> > >
> > > We are excited to announce that we have been developing a Wikisource reader app for Android mobile users for the last three months and the beta version of the app is almost ready for testing. The development of the mobile app was a much-awaited request from the Wikisource community and when fully released, hopefully, it will help bring more readers to Wikisource platforms.
> > >
> > > Necessary links of the reader app
> > >
> > > - A documentation page is in draft on meta wiki here - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_reader_app
> > > - The Github repo of the code is here - https://github.com/cis-india/Wikisource-Reader
> > >
> > > Wikidata integration
> > >
> > > We have been using the FRBR data model used in the Wikidata WikiProject Books to handle the descriptive metadata needed for filtering and categorizing the contents of the app. To be included in the app, an edition should have
> > >
> > > - fully proofread or validated
> > > - transcluded into the main namespace or NS:0
> > > - a Wikidata item with descriptive metadata property like title, author etc.
> > > - Wikisource index page url (P1957) property linked with that item
> > > - Wikisource sitelink for the NS:0 transcluded page linked with that item
> > > - a proofread and/or validated badge linked with that sitelink.
> > >
> > > Here are a few example of the book editions which are included in the app
> > >
> > > - An example of a Bangla book edition is this one
> > > - A list of all French books to be included in the app can be found here - https://w.wiki/CkMP
> > >
> > > Pilot languages and API
> > >
> > > In the beta version, we have piloted with English, French and Bangla as these three languages are storing their metadata on Wikidata. We will roll out for other languages gradually. An API was built using Django and deployed on Toolforge which serves a catalogue of books following the data model described above. It periodically runs a set of SPARQL queries to retrieve data, processes that data and updates the database.
> > >
> > > - Link - https://wsindex.toolforge.org/books/
> > > - Repo - https://codeberg.org/ph4ni/wsindex
> > >
> > > Features
> > >
> > > We have decided to display the books in epub format which will be generated through WS-export tool. Any issues related to epub generation can be reported here.
> > >
> > > Right now, the following features are available
> > >
> > > 1. Browse through a list of works which are completely proofread or validated.
> > > 2. Filter based on the language or literary form of your choice.
> > > 3. Search for books by title or author.
> > > 4. Download books to your local device for offline access.
> > > 5. Share links to the Wikisource page of each book.
> > > 6. Read, delete, and track completion percentage of books in your local library.
> > > 7. Change font size, look up words, and access a dictionary.
> > > 8. Switch between dark and light themes for comfortable reading.
> > > 9. Use the app in multiple languages.
> > >
> > > Currently, we are working on the following areas
> > >
> > > - Internal epub reader which can render the styling of the contents as much as possible
> > > - Design of the contents and metadata within the app
> > > - Fixes here and there
> > >
> > > Next steps
> > >
> > >
> > > In coming days, we will
> > >
> > > - start conversation with the Wikisource communities to make aware about the app, share the workflow needed to include contents there and get feedback for further development. (We had one call with the Marathi Wikisource community already).
> > >
> > > - Next community conversation hour
> > >
> > > - Sunday, 26 January 12:00 – 13:00 UTC
> > > - Video call link: https://meet.google.com/khd-qvfy-nsr
> > >
> > > - discuss with all stakeholders regarding necessary steps.
> > > - register for Google Play Store and release the stable version of the app there
> > > - release the app in other play stores gradually.
> > >
> > > We would like to specially thank Sai Phanindra, who has developed the app as an assignment from CIS-A2K.
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > Bodhisattwa
> > > (Part-time consultant, CIS-A2K)
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikisource-l mailing list -- wikisource-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe send an email to wikisource-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Hello Wikisourcerers,
We have some announcements to make from our end related to the Wikisource
reader app.
-
The Wikisource reader app entirely depends on the WS-export
<https://ws-export.wmcloud.org/> tool while downloading the books. As
the maintainers of the WS-export tool are currently working to make it more
robust and dependable than before, we have decided to wait for them to
finish their work and slightly postpone the launch of the app on play
stores for everyone to use.
-
CIS-A2K has sponsored the development of the app. As some of you might
know from recent official communications coming from them that they are
recently in a critical situation. That jeopardises the future maintenance
of the app for the next few years. We have explored a few stable Wikimedia
affiliates from different parts of the world who can host and help maintain
the app in upcoming years, but as we have received repeated assurances from
the current leadership of CIS-A2K team, the app will be hosted by them
under their play store account for now, until it cannot be sustained there.
The app will also be available on F-Droid.
-
We have worked on a few improvements including fetching titles and
thumbnails, localising language names, improving text selection options,
etc.
-
For titles, as discussed on the Meta-Wiki talk page, the app will
query in the following manner,
-
Title (P1476 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P1476>) in
native language
-
label in native language, if the above is not present
-
label in multiple language (mul), if the above is not present
-
For thumbnails, the app will query in the following manner
-
Image (P18 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P18>)
-
title page number (P4714
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P4714>) qualifier used in
P996 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P996>, if the above
is not present
-
Apart from the existing language support for Bangla, English, French,
Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu, we have added Assamese,
Indonesian and Malay after getting requests from some of the participants
of the Wikisource conference speaking these languages. The app interface is
also available in all these languages to some extent.
-
We are also working towards localisation of the app, however it will
require some time from our end to host the strings on TranslateWiki.
Meanwhile, you can reach out to us if you are interested in assisting us
with localisation.
-
Now that the core development is done, future work will be done
voluntarily. We are more than happy to invite the Wikimedia developer
community to send bug reports
<https://github.com/cis-india/Wikisource-Reader/issues>, fixes, and
features. We are also looking forward to including app related development
in upcoming hackathons and internships.
-
We will also be publishing some tutorials and guides to easily structure
wikidata items related to works on Wikisource. We hope the community takes
interest in improving Wikidata items so that we can bring more works into
the app and also into broader access.
-
The app now lists 6,577 completed works in 12 languages 🎉
-
Assamese - 23
-
Bangla - 457
-
English - 1785
-
French - 3690
-
Hindi - 1
-
Indonesian - 21
-
Malay - 9
-
Marathi - 65
-
Punjabi - 23
-
Spanish - 345
-
Telugu - 77
-
Tamil - 81
Regards,
Bodhisattwa and Sai Phanindra
Hello everyone,
I’m excited to invite you to the 27th edition of the DCW Conversation Hour,
featuring Jacqueline Chen, a Senior Program Officer at the Wikimedia
Foundation, who works with the Community Resources Team. In this session,
we'll explore the erstwhile Wikimedia Alliances Fund Programme and focus on
learnings from the experience, strategies for aligning funding programmes
with partnership sourcing, and the broader implications for movement goals.
The conversation hour is scheduled for Sunday, 16 March 2025, at 05:30 UTC
(11:00 am IST).
For more details, please visit the event page on our website:
https://dcwwiki.org/dc-iy
The link for registration for the event is:
https://w.wiki/DKF7
I'm excited to see you participate. Please bring along your questions!
Kind regards,
Ariba
Deoband Community Wikimedia