Greetings Wikimedia family,
I am delighted to share *Wiki Rescues Manuscripts
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Rescues_Manuscripts>*, a
call-to-action and project to support the digitization of manuscripts on
Wikimedia platforms (Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource). The project
consists of two complementary pilots. The first pilot digitizes manuscripts
in Indonesia
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Rescues_Manuscripts#Wiki_Rescues_Manuscripts_pilot_in_Indonesia>
through a collaboration with PPIM <https://ppim.uinjkt.ac.id/>, Wikimedia
Indonesia, and other partners. The second pilot tests the viability of
Transkribus
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Rescues_Manuscripts#Transkribus_pilot>
(an AI-powered text and handwriting recognition tool) for languages that
are not yet supported by OCR (optical character recognition). We are
starting with the Balinese language because the community has already
produced the number of transcriptions that we need to create a model in
Transkribus.
I invite you to *sign-up as a Learning Partner* in the final section of the
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Rescues_Manuscripts#Learning_partners_sign-up>Meta-Wiki
page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Rescues_Manuscripts#Learning_partners_sign-up>
if
your community, affiliate, or organization is interested in digitizing
manuscripts. We would love to not only support you but also learn from you.I
am happy to share that *two Wikisource Technical Fellows (Kolawole Lawal &
Parthiv Menon)* will be contributing to the Wiki Rescues Manuscripts
project until June 2023. They will focus on meeting the technical needs of
Indonesian Wikisource communities and potentially integrating Transrkibus
into Wikimedia OCR. Here is a brief introduction from each of them:*Hi
everyone, I am Kolawole. I’m from Nigeria. I am glad to be a part of the
Wikimedia movement. I love solving software-related problems and listening
to good music. I look forward to collaborating and contributing to
Wikisource as a Technical Fellow.**Hello! I am Parthiv, a final year
undergraduate student from India. I love to read and draw, enjoy meeting
new people, exploring new places, playing sports, and (unpopular opinion)
generally not a big fan of cities. I am fluent with English, Hindi,
Gujarati and Malayalam, and can understand a couple of other South Indian
languages as well. More importantly, I am looking forward to my time here
for it surely does seem like it's going to be fun :)*Finally, I would like
to invite you all to join us for the next Wikisource Triage meeting
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_Triage_meetings#October_2022_meeting>
on *26th October 2022 at 2 PM UTC (7:30 PM IST)* where we will be
discussing the pilots and introducing Kolawale and Parthiv. Feel free to
edit the agenda directly to add further topics for the meeting. Kindly drop
me an email on sgill(a)wikimedia.org if you would like to be added to the
calendar invitation for the meeting.
Looking forward to meeting some of you next week. Have a great weekend!
Regards
Satdeep
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Rescues_Manuscripts
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Rescues_Manuscripts#Wiki_Rescues_Manus…
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Rescues_Manuscripts#Transkribus_pilot
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Rescues_Manuscripts#Learning_partners_…
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_Triage_meetings#October_2022_mee…
--
Satdeep Gill (pronouns - he, him)
Senior Program Officer
Culture and Heritage
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>