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Grants:Project/Wikilover90/Heritage GLAM/Midpoint

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Report accepted
This midpoint report for a Project Grant approved in FY 2018-19 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Wikilover90/Heritage GLAM.
  • You may still review or add to the discussion about this report on its talk page.
  • You are welcome to email projectgrants(_AT_)wikimedia.org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.



Welcome to this project's midpoint report! This report shares progress and learning from the grantee's first 6 months.

Summary

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An editor writing the kind of books they read or research with, at Wikisource Workshop

In a few short sentences or bullet points, give the main highlights of what happened with your project so far. This project was designed to document the cultural heritage of Punjab. We have successfully formed and maintained partnerships with Punjabi cultural institutions. In the last six months, we had new developments in partnerships. We were successfully able to form partnerships with Punjab Lalit Kala Akademy which works closely with Punjab Arts Council. We were able to organize the Wikiverse Commons Conference, renamed as Access to Arts Conference which turned out to be a huge success. We will be working closely with the artists interested in collaborations in the next few months.

Along with that, we were able to digitize some important works from mid modern period and contemporary period (mentioned below) that will be of good use to readers and researchers at large.

Several workshops for proofreading and validation training were organized. In one of the workshop, we were able to partner with the Punjabi University, Punjabi Literature Department to organize a Wikisource workshop for Punjabi Research scholars.

We have been able to raise awareness about Wikisource project among the Punjabi community. Wikisource unlike normal PDF books, renders text which can be picked straight from google. This makes it easy for people to search for particular topics, quotes, and phrases directly from the internet.

 
 
Yann Forget presenting at Access to Arts Conference
 
Wikilover at a Wikisource Workshop
 
Wikimedians editing Punjabi Wikisource from mobile devices and laptop at a proofreading event
 
Wikisource workshop

Methods and activities

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How have you setup your project, and what work has been completed so far?

Describe how you've setup your experiment or pilot, sharing your key focuses so far and including links to any background research or past learning that has guided your decisions. List and describe the activities you've undertaken as part of your project to this point.


This has been a wonderful journey. As a Wikimedian-in-Residence, the role to ensure the partnership between the government cultural institutions and Wikimedia community was quite challenging. Yet, the fruit of this labor has been something that will progress and keep developing with time.

Equipment

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DIY Scanner
 
 
 
 
 
A group photo of participants of Punjabi Wikisource Workshop

After careful consideration and advise from digitization experts, we ordered a complete archivist quill set from diybookscanner.org, WD Portable External Hard Drive, AmazonBasics 60-Inch Lightweight Tripod, ASUS Core i5-8300H 8th Gen/8GB RAM laptop, CZUR ET16 Plus CZUR Book & Document Scanner with Smart OCR for Mac and Windows. KCVelaga assembled the scanner using the manual and instructions provided by Jonathon Duerig from http://www.diybookscanner.org/.

Partnerships

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We had chance to actively work with the Municipal Public Library, Patiala and in the development of partnerships, we have been discussing with Central Library Patiala for GLAM partnership and have been digitizing from both these libraries. Apart from this, we formed a partnership with Punjab Lalit Kala Akademy, Open Heritage Foundation, Punjab Arts Council for Wikiverse Commons Conference (Access to Arts Conference). We will be working with the Chandigarh Government Museum and other galleries in the next half of the project.

Events

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Following is the report of all the events organized under Heritage GLAM:

Among these, 2 Wikisource events were organized in city Khanna by Hardarshan Benipal who is also Wikisource training and outreach officer in volunteer role for the project. Out of all these events, there were two significant events organized that brought surprisingly positive outcome.

Wikisource Workshop Punjabi University

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We had over 30 participants in this workshop ranging from literature masters students and research scholars to retirees. Apart from the routine proofreading and typing training in Punjabi, we did a survey with them that was aimed at recognizing what kind of books they liked to read. Along with knowledge producers, knowledge consumers have equal importance for all Wiki projects, especially Wikisource. This workshop was a result of collaboration between Punjabi Wiki community and Punjabi Literature department of Punjabi University under head of the department Professor Surjeet Singh.

 
Access to Arts Conference
 
Diwan Manna, Rupika Sharma, KCVelaga and Satdeep at Access to Arts Conference
 
An artist engaging with the Access to Arts Conference panel

Access to Arts Conference

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This conference was one of the best outcomes of this project which had an unexpected development. We organized this conference in partnership with Punjab Lalit Kala Akedemy, Punjab Arts Council and Open Heritage Foundation. This conference was designed for artists of North India to make them aware about Wikimedia movement and open access movement running globally. One of the outcomes of this conference apart from the awareness and partnerships was the willingness of artists to collaborate with Wikimedia. We will be doing a follow-up workshop where the artists will be donating their work to the Commons. Under the panel discussion and the survey for the artists, it was pointed out that the reason India is so behind the Open Access movement is due to lack of awareness among artists about Wikimedia movement and Open source licenses. It was brought up during the panel discussion that there should be more events organized in different places and circles to get the artist community more involved in Commons. We are hoping to plan for a series of such conferences with our partners in the near future. More information can be read here.

 
Yann Forget at Access to Arts conference
 
 
Access to Arts team

Participants or users engaged

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In the duration of the project, over 45 users were engaged in Punjabi Wikisource in which over 25 new accounts were made. We have started a campaign dashboard to track their monthly activity. This will be updated over the months with the recent additions.

 
Charan Gill giving a talk at Wikisource Workshop
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The research work for determining the copyright status was one of the challenging parts of the project. Since there is not much information available online about Punjabi literature, this makes it harder to analyze the status. It made us realize that there is a need to develop a centralized repository of Punjabi authors that would make the work of readers and researchers really easy. We will start a pilot for this project. We have been talking with the institutions we are working to integrate the digital catalogue with Wikidata using Wikibase. We are hoping to make progress in the next steps of this project in the near future.

Community Research Work

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We did a survey during one of the workshops to understand what are the needs and interests of people from different age groups and interests. The feedback we got ranged from holy books, Punjabi literature novels, old Punjabi poetry, encyclopedias and philosophical books. Using that survey, we gave priority to the books to be digitized.

Important Books

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Some of the important books digitized in the project are:

  • Guru Granth Sahib: Guru Granth Sahib ji (Punjabi: ਗੁਰੂ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਸਾਹਿਬ) is the principal scripture of Sikhism. It was written by the Six gurus of Sikhism and is itself regarded by Sikhs as the final, sovereign, and eternal living guru. The text consists of 1,430 angs (pages) and 6,000 śabads (line compositions), which are poetically rendered and set to a rhythmic ancient north Indian classical form of music.[7] The Guru Granth Sahib is written in the Gurmukhī script, in various languages, including Lahnda (Western Punjabi), Braj Bhasha, Khariboli, Sanskrit, Sindhi, and Persian. Guru Granth Sahib was composed by the Sikh Gurus: Guru Nanak Dev, Guru Angad Dev, Guru Amar Das, Guru Ram Das, Guru Arjan Dev, Guru Tegh Bahadur and Guru Gobind Singh added 1 sloakh in mahala 9 Ang 1429. It also contains the traditions and teachings of Indian sants (saints), such as Ravidas, Ramananda, Bhagat Bhikhan, Kabir and Namdev among others, and Muslim Sufi saint Sheikh Farid.
  • Mahan Kosh: This is first edition by written by Bhai Kahn Singh, a Punjabi Sikh lexicographer and encyclopedist and important personality in the Singh Sabha Movement. Guru Shabad Ratnakar Mahan Kosh, known by its more popular name of Mahan Kosh, is a Punjabi language encyclopedia which was compiled by Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha over fourteen years. It was the first Punjabi encyclopedia, it contains more than 70,000 words, some of them have sufficient reference from Guru Granth Sahib, Dasam Granth, Gur Pratap Suraj Granth and from other Sikhism books. It is considered a groundbreaking work in terms of its impact and its level of scholarship. Mahan Kosh has 64,263 entries arranged in alphabetical order of the Gurmukhi script covering religious and historical terms in the Sikh canon. Each entry records the etymology and different meanings of the term "according to its usage at different places in different works" alongside textual quotations.
  • Bhai Gurdas: This is first edition by famous author Harinder Singh Roop on biography of Bhai Gurdas, original scribe of Guru Granth Sahib. Bhai Gurdas (Punjabi: ਭਾਈ ਗੁਰਦਾਸ; 1551 – August 25, 1636) was an influential Sikh figure, writer, historian and preacher. He served as the first Jathedar of Akal Takht.
  • Gurchhand Diwakar: Written by the author of Mahan Kosh “Bhai Kahan Singh Nabha”, this is the first edition that was published in 1914. This explains the lexicography of Sikh literature.
  • Bhagat Singh: This is the biography of famous martyr Shaheed Bhagat Singh written by Triloki Singh. Shaheed Bhagat Singh was an Indian socialist revolutionary whose two acts of dramatic violence against the British in India and execution at age 23 made him a folk hero of the Indian independence movement.
  • Tagore Kahaniyan: This is translation done by Shanti Narain Kunjahi on a compilation of tales written by renowned Bengali author Rabindra Nath Tagore.
  • The Nights of France: Written by Tara Singh, this book contains true tales of army life experiences, friendships, foreign culture exchange, inter country relations from 1940s. (twentieth century).
  • Pothi Panj Granthi Steek: Written by Pandit Narain Singh Gyani, this holy book contains scriptures from Guru Granth Saheb Ji.
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Link to Complete Gallery

Midpoint outcomes

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What are the results of your project or any experiments you’ve worked on so far?

Please discuss anything you have created or changed (organized, built, grown, etc) as a result of your project to date.

  • More than were uploaded over 9600 pages on Punjabi Wikisource from 43 works (This link will keep showing the new updates).
  • 50 participants joined us in different project training events, workshops and edited on Punjabi Wikisource.
  • Over 70 artists joined us for Wikiverse Commons Conference organized in July 2019. Among them were notable artists Diwan Manna and Manjot Kair who spoke as spokesperson for Wikimedia movement for the artists present in the conference.
  • Total events organized were 15 in the last 6 months in which 5 of them were Wikisource workshop, Wikiverse Commons Conference (which we also called Access to Arts conference), and over 9 meetups with team members, advisors, GLAM staff and community.
  • Community engagement: We have a telegram group for Heritage Glam which we use to communicate with the heritage GLAM team. Along with that, we used the Punjabi Wikisource Messenger group, Punjabi Wikisource village pump and Whatsapp group for communication with community. We ensured there was friendly space policy undertaken in all the communication channels as well as all the Wiki events organized under project Heritage GLAM.
  • Gave a lightning talk about Wikisource project at Wikimania in GLAM space.
  • As a result of our partnerships, we have established a good faith in the government circles about Wikimedia movement and our projects. This will help the movement grow in the coming time in Punjab.

Finances

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Please take some time to update the table in your project finances page. Check that you’ve listed all approved and actual expenditures as instructed. If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided there to explain them.

Then, answer the following question here: Have you spent your funds according to plan so far? Please briefly describe any major changes to budget or expenditures that you anticipate for the second half of your project. Most of the expenses have been the way we originally envisioned to be. One of the unexpected expense we had was the customs cost to get DIY scanner to India. The retailer did not include this information in the original invoice we took but was added later. Rest of the details can be checked at the finance tab of the project grant page.

Learning

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The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you are taking enough risks to learn something really interesting! Please use the below sections to describe what is working and what you plan to change for the second half of your project.

What are the challenges

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What challenges or obstacles have you encountered? What will you do differently going forward? Please list these as short bullet points. We had the following challenges under the project Heritage GLAM during the last six months:

  • Determining the copyright status of the Punjabi work has been a challenging task. Due to lack of a centralized repository of Punjabi authors, determining the status of author’s lifespan and the work has been hard. Many of the medieval authors had nothing mentioned on internet. This subject is a curiosity for Punjabi researchers and remains a mystery for them. We will be working on this issue in the next steps of this project.
  • The libraries are old and unkempt. Many of the books and work has been fallen prey to bookworms and bookbugs and many times, we found missing pages in the books that were resultantant of rot spread in books due to time. And other times, just touching the book resulted in disintegration of the book. This is one of the reasons, we should save the lifetime work of authors, otherwise this precious literature will not survive after a few more years.
  • Organizing an event with a partner has both its pros and cons. One of the cons is a shared responsibility or an independent task on which the event depends on. For instance, Access to Arts took months of planning, its video documentation was done by our partners using a professional company. Those videos are still going to take some time for editing before they get published. So, we have to wait for them to finish the task before we can share the video on Commons.
  • Wikisource needs to have better interface for easy editing. For instance, Wikipedia has a visual editor but the same has not been built for Wikisource. Another technical interface issue is to look up for any book in Wikisource. It is hard for an experienced Wikisourcer to look for a book but almost impossible for a non-Wikimedian to look up any book. This hard interface not only reduces the prospective readers who want to come to our project site and read or download the books but also, the editors who want to search for a particular book to edit.
  • Retention of editors on a daily basis is hard. You need to keep doing events, and online campaigns to keep their interests piqued.
  • There was an issue with the opening of .jar file in Java despite the latest download of Java in the Macbook. For that, a separate software to open the .jar file (Pattypan) was installed after researching for issue on the internet.
  • Another issue that came with Pattypan was the error in uploading the sheet to validate and upload on Pattypan. The second page (Templates) was missed while copying the xml file and that created errors again and again.
  • We had issues in assembling of DIY scanner despite its manual, there were some steps missing and not accurate.

What is working well

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What have you found works best so far? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.

  • Your learning pattern link goes here

We have created one new learning pattern on Uploading files using VicuñaUploader and made some addition in the existing learning pattern on Uploading files using Pattypan. We will update again by adding more learning patterns that we are still working on. Apart from the expertise and shared learning, we have some other important points to share. For this project, we used different tools for uploading the books:

 
 
  • Chunked uploads: This is a feature present in the upload wizard used in Wikimedia Commons. This tool originally uploaded files of up-to 100 MB. But now it can upload files till 4 GB.
  • PattyPan: Pattypan is an open-source tool written in Java by Yarl and designed to upload files to Wikimedia Commons and other Wikimedia projects. More info based on the experience has been added to its existing learning pattern of uploading files using Pattypan.
  • VicuñaUploader: VicuñaUploader is an open-source desktop application written in Java, designed to upload files to Wikimedia Commons and other Wikimedia projects. It is platform-independent but requires a Java virtual machine to be installed on your computer (usually as part of a Java Runtime Environment). Downsides? This software only supports Windows. We have created this learning pattern based on our experience.
  • There was research work needed to be done for the to select the digitization tools, methods and techniques needed for the project. We will explain in detail in the learning pattern in the next few months integrating more information on digitization of images and archives.

Next steps and opportunities

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What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your project? Please list these as short bullet points.

  • In the next steps of this project, we are going to work in the Chandigarh Museum and Art Galleries.
  • We have several online contests planned for Punjabi Wikisource that start from October.
  • We have a Commons workshop planned as a post-conference follow-up with the artists.
  • We will be continuing digitizing work with our partner institutions.
  • We have several Wikisource training workshops and proofreading events planned ahead.
  • In the near future, we hope to work with the library and museum to integrate the metadata from the digital catalogue to Wikidata.
  • The second new thing we are planning is Wiki Loves Heritage with the local cultural institutions of Chandigarh city.
  • Lastly, from the conference Access to Arts, we gathered that more such events need to be organized to get high level input from influential artists which will empower and pan out the open access and Wikimedia movement in India.
  • For community engagement, we will be developing guides and explainer videos to make editing fun and easy on Wikisource.

Grantee reflection

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We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being an grantee has been so far. What is one thing that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed from the past 3 months?


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