NDEC Wikipedia Editorial and Research Team/Project In Search of the Roots

Project In Search of the Roots is an ambitious project by NDEC Wikipedia Editorial and Research Team which primarily focuses on collecting offline resources like historical photographs, offline references, interviewing knowledgeable persons related to the history of Notre Dame College, Dhaka.

Project Logo

This project is mainly a part of the first phase (Collection of Knowledge) of the team's work procedure.

Background

This project is led by one of the leading members of "Project Featured ArticleːNDC" (in Bangla Wikipedia) where despite having possible Conflict of interest issues, a group of the students of "Notre Dame College, Dhaka" led their college article to the Featured Articles list of Bangla Wikipedia after a long process of peer review and community engagement. This experience showed that online resources are not always enough to bring a complete image of any topic in Wikipedia. The article needed references from old books that are not available online, historical photographs that are under the copyright of someone else, some good images of the campus that were not possible for that team to collect because of financial and technical boundaries. After listing the necessary resources that are needed to enrich the focused articles, NDEC Wikipedia Editorial & Research Team prepared their plans and moved according to them.

Goals

Ideas behind the project logo

Collecting offline resources that are necessary for proper encyclopedic coverage of the articles related to Notre Dame College, Dhaka. A good number of quality media contents (images, videos and pdfs) will be added to Wikimedia Commons which will be used at Bangla, English & Simple English Wikipedia in the "Notre Dame College, Dhaka" and "Holy Cross mission in Bangladesh" related articles. Besides rare and historical books will be collected to add references to the target articles.
Traning the team. This project will be an opportunity for "on-the-job" training for a specialized team of students that can respond to any project aiming at spreading the Wikimedia Movement among the students of Bangladesh. We have intentions to deploy this team to start the Wiki Education program in Bangladesh in the upcoming days.
This project will also bear the messages of the Wikimedia Movement to the related institutions, organizations, and individuals. Most of them didn't even hear about Wikimedia Movement before.

Core Team

1. Editorial wingː This wing is responsible for the titles, captions, and details of every image we collect. They'll ensure the best use of the images in different language wikis after the projects. Besides, they will have to do the entire follow-up of this project which will include adding these photos to the respective Wikipedia pages, updating the pages with references we already collected, etc. They will work completely online. User:Your Poltergeist O3 & User:!mdadul !slam will be in charge of this wing.

2. Planning & Documentation wingː This wing will store all our works, make & evaluate plans, communicate with the respective institution or organizations where needed. They'll also keep active communication with the local community and related Wikipedia communities. They'll also work online. User:Mrb Rafi will take care of this wing (behind the scene) but as this user have to handle the whole project, Srejan Debnath and User:Ishmam Ahbab will be in charge of this wing officially.

3. Photography & Graphics wingː This wing has its own photo and videography equipment including DSLR cameras, gimbals, and drones. They'll have to work physically for more than ten days. After taking outdoor shots, this team will edit all the media contents collected earlier from their home. User: Naveed MD Aziz will be in charge of the graphics wing.

4. Operations wingː This wing is responsible for managing every physical and online activities of the team. They'll get organizational support from Notre Dame English Club's core workforce. User:Saadiqnafis will be in charge of this wing.

Outcome

Wikimedia Commons category for this project.

Under this project, we identified & collected the following books and in related cases, we interviewed the author of the books and asked if media files related to the books can be published under an open license. Almost all the books have been protected with copyright and so we are unable to provide public access to these books. They will be used later to enrich Notre Dame College, Dhaka-related articles.

Forty Years in Bangladesh: Memoirs of Father Timm by Richard W. Timm, former principal of NDC, Dhaka published by Karitas Bangladesh.
The Spirit of Notre Dame: A History of Notre Dame College : Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1949-2000 by Charles P. Gillespie, former teacher, NDC, Dhaka & Joseph S. Peixotto, former principal, NDC, Dhaka. Published by Provincial House, 2001.
A Textbook of Biology, 4th edition (1964) by Richard W. Timm, former principal of NDC, Dhaka & A.H. Bhuiyan, former teacher, Dhaka College, Dhaka published by Mullick Brothers, Dhaka, first published in 1957.
নটর ডেম কলেজের পঞ্চাশ বছর পূর্তি উপলক্ষে সুবর্ণ স্মারক (১৯৪৯ - ১৯৯৯ খ্রিː); "The Golden Souvenir - Souvenir magazine of Notre Dame College's fifty years anniversary" published by Notre Dame College, Dhaka.
Independence of Bangladesh in 266 Days: History and Documentary Evidence by Muhammad Nurul Kadir, an alumnus of NDC, Dhaka & former ambassador of the Government of the Peoples' Republic of Bangladesh. Published by Mukto Publishers.

We've interviewed numerous experienced individuals with in-depth knowledge of the history of Notre Dame College, Dhaka. We'll use these interviews as the starting point of our study and find references supporting or opposing the information collected from the interviews.

We've also identified a pool of online resources and documented them. They will be used later to update related Wikipedia articles.
The most important outcome is, that the team has got a shape while working on this project. Members can feel more attached to this team with a stronger team spirit than before (This was the first-ever formal project by them); our communication channels, our work procedure, our documentation place & procedure have started to become meaningful suddenly to them. Now we can target more complex and more ambitious projects in the future more confidently.

Contact

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding this project, please don't hesitate to drop them on the Discussion page.

You can also mail us at "ndec_research googlegroups.com"