In Indic languages , the basic issue is OCR. Till date we have no OCR in Indic languages. My opinion tying is not the solution, it can be temporary solution.


On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 5:10 PM, Aarti K. Dwivedi <ellydwivedi2093@gmail.com> wrote:
I think it would be nice if we could ask for help from AnkurIndia. Although they work in Bengali, I am sure they would have some resources which we can find useful for Malayalam as well as other Indian languages.


On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 2:33 AM, Anivar Aravind <anivar.aravind@gmail.com> wrote:
It is widely covered in vernacular press

I think it may be relevant to share the context of this too . This may be helpful and useful for other wikisource communities. I am part of the Organizing Team and our organization , Swathanthra Malayalam Computing is one of the partners for this

1. Unlike Latin based languages , Most of the Indian languages does not have a functional OCR solution. So for us  the digitalising means typing the pages and proofreading them .
2. Even though there are many state run institutions and libraries are engaged in scanning books for their digitization , The public domain works are not available in most cases . Initiatives like GLAM  s not much suited for small librarys and state institutions.
3. In short the absence / Way to thank library for preserving books  till they release under public domain  with proper media attention becomes a difficult task . This program experimenting a way to thank Govt institution named Keral Sahithya academi  via media attention for preserving and donating the public domain copies to many books to wikisource .
4.Wikisource can be used as a way of training new users to familiarize with mediawiki and wikisyntax . A Typing+proofreading competition with declared prizes anyway attracts more users and attention . within first 5 days 80+ new contributors and 798 pages added to Malayalam wikisource
5. We Succeeded in getting IT@School program of Govt of Kerala as an official partner and created a seperate competition for schools . So Students under the guidance of teachers can involve in  Malayalam wikisource and get exposure for wikimedia projects
6. This helps in building more references for wikipedia articles . This is an important concern for many languages without much digital archives

Thanks to Vishnu , Director of CIS-A2K for initially coming up with an idea of running a proofreading contest in malayalam wikipedia by offering some Devices . This helped us to start exploring the possibilities and expanding the program with more partners .

In last October Malayalam wikisource community released a 2.0 version of its offline CD  . This is the next major endeavour


~ regards
Anivar Aravind
User:AniVar





On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 5:45 PM, Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84@gmail.com> wrote:
That is an amazing news, Manoj, 
good job!

Also, think about writing a blog post for the Wikimedia blog:
they are always interested in hosting news a about Wikisources all around the world.

Aubrey 


On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 7:13 PM, Jayanta Nath <jayantanth@gmail.com> wrote:
Keep it up Manoj , it's a great initiatives. We shall try the same for Bengali wiki source .

Jayanta

On Thursday, January 2, 2014, manoj k wrote:
Dear friends,

New year wishes to all.

Wikisource project, a project of Wikimedia foundation is celebrating its tenth anniversary. As a part of the decennary celebrations, the Wikisource projects in various languages all over the world are conducting  competitions that enrich their contents including but not limited to proof-reading and digitization. Being a part of it, Wikisource's Malayalam version - Wiki Grandhasala community, a voluntary unit engaged in collecting and digitizing  valuable Malayalam books of yesteryears, is organizing a digitization (Typing & Proofreading) competition, along with various Government as well as Non-Government establishments and other voluntary organisations with similar interests like Kerala Sahithya Academy, IT@ school Project,  Swathanthra Malayalam Computing and Center for  Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) under the banner of  Malayalam Wiki community.. This digitisation competition is being conducted as a part of an effort that collects Malayalam Books whose copyright date has expired in digital form (in unicode format) preserving the content and makig them more accessible and popular. The competition lasts for a month, starting on January 1, 2014 and ending on Jan 31, 2014. The competition focuses especially individuals and schools and includes some attractive prizes including E-book readers, Tablets and selected books for those who lead the scoreboard. In this competition, books that was recently released by Kerala Sahithya Academy to its public collection will be digitised. 

Details of the competition;There are two specific competitions

Competition for individuals:-
This competition is for the general public. It includes typing and proofreading of selected books. The main aim is to attract people who are active in social media into Wiki Grandhasala activities. Those who wish to participate in this competition should register before January 31st 2014. Here are the pages which are to be typed in as part of this competition.

Competition for schools:-
Presently many student groups, through the IT Cell of their respective schools, participate actively in the Wiki Grandhasala effort. This version of the competition aims to increase the participation of such student groups. The idea is to inculcate more love for their mother tongue among the students. The process also aims at providing awareness out about such collaborative activities, getting them interested in computer related areas, specifically Language Computing. Scanned copies of books that are in public domain will be made available to the respective schools. Under the supervision of  IT@school coordinators  of each school, students have to type them and proof read, which will be added to Wiki Grandhasala.

The prizes (like E-book readers, Portable scanners) are sponsored by Center for Internet and Society, Kerala Sahithya Academy and Swathanthra Malayalam Computing. Also, certificates will be awarded to all students who participate in the school level competition and IT@school coordinators,  for their coordination activities.

Those who wish to sponsor more prizes, and those who wish to make scanned/hard copies books in the public domain availale to Wiki Grandhasala can contact mlwikisource@gmail.com.


For Malayalam Wikisource Community

Manoj.K/മനോജ്.കെ
General Convener, Malayalam Wikisource Digitization Contest 2014

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--
Aarti K. Dwivedi


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