Wikimedia Armenia/Reports/2013-07

	May
	Jun
	Jul
	Aug
	Sep
	Oct
	Nov
	Dec
	2014

2013
July

Digitization of Soviet Armenian Enyclopedia (SAE)

Signed contract between Armenian Encyclopedia & IT School

In September 2011 Armenian Encyclopedia Publishing House in cooperation with Information Technology School foundation signed an agreement under which the publishing house will allow circulation of its publications under Creative Commons BY-SA 3. Armenian Encyclopedia Publishing House's publications include Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia (13 volumes), Armenian Cause encyclopedia (Armenian and Russian versions), Armenian Nature encyclopedia, Household encyclopedia , Popular medical encyclopedia, Armenia encyclopedia, Karabakh liberation war encyclopedia, Armenian short encyclopedia (4 volumes), Armenian diaspora encyclopedia etc.

SAE volumes

At first it was decided to digitize Armenian Soviet Encylcopedia. SAE appeared in 1974, and the first edition in 13 volumes was complete by 1987. The SAE includes 38,767 articles, 15,263 images and 858 maps and over 100,000 copies have been printed. It is the largest printed encyclopedia in Armenian language.

It was planned to finish the digitization of SAE by the end of 2013. The digitization process was started in June 2013 and lasted 6 months. It was conducted by WMA volunteers enrolled in the program, mainly by Aleksey Chalabyan (scanning) & Haykaz Avetisyan (OCR). The free license of the sole digitization soft for Armenian language (ABBYY FineReader) was provided by ABBYY company's vice president Aram Pakhchanyan. During the first month the 1st & 2nd volumes of SAE were digitized and put on Wikisource.

By the end of 2013 all volumes of SAE were available on Wikisourse (see the list) and used in wikiediting and wikiprojects.

Translation of wiki brochures

Translation of wiki guidebooks, brochures and educational materials was of great importance for Wikimedia Armenia. The presence of Wiki education materials in Armenian language would promote spread of wiki movement and help readers edit Wikipedia. The translation team was formed in early March 2013 by 3 WMAM volunteers & active wikieditors - Vachagan Gratyan, Mher Bekaryan and Haykaz Avetisyan. Four important brochures were chosen - Welcome to Wikipedia, Wikipedia Article Quality, GLAM and Ten simple rules brochures. Translation, publishing preparation and publishing both in printed and electronic versions was started in early March and lasted 4 months.