CIS-A2K/Events/Relicensing and Digitisation workshop at Govinda Dasa College, Surathkal

CIS-A2K in collaborations with Karavali Wikimedians User Group (KWUG) organised a workshop on Relicensing and Digitization at Govinda Dasa College, Surathkal on 15 and 16 September 2023 at Surathkal, Karnataka. CIS-A2K engaged a resource person from Institutional partner, Lek Ladki Abhiyan, Satara, Maharashtra to train the Wikimedians in digitisation process.

We facilitated the process the of relicensing initiated by Kavitha Kana, a member of KWUG, with Prof. M. Prabhakara Joshy. He relicensed 3 books on Yakshagana, a form of local folk culture. Kavitha, Kishore Kumar Rai and other KWUG members mobilised the Govinda Dasa College functionaries and other librarians from the Surathkal city to organise a two day workshop on relicensing and digitisation process. The students and teachers from various faculties were involved in Wikimedia orientation and digitisation training sessions.

On 15 September, the Wikimedia orientation session was conducted in the library. In this session, around 25 students and 10 faculty members participated. After this session, the hands on skill training was conducted. The members were trained in basic Wiki editing and digitisation process. Three students shown keen interest in scanning and processing. Prof. Sanjiv Bonde, coordinator of Lek Ladki Abhiyan from Satara trained them in scanning. KWUG members involved librarians and archivists from other institutions as well.

On the second day, the scanning of one book was completed and the pdf was prepared for uploading. The function was organised to release the book on Wikimedia Commons in the presence of author M. Prabhakara Joshy. About 60 students and 15 faculty members, librarians attended this program. The speeches by Principal, former and present librarian and the author provided valuable insights about free knowledge creation, importance of documenting the local heritage and digitisation of reference value texts for research. In the program, M. Prabhakara Joshy generously declared to release his 18 more books and appealed other authors to enrich the free knowledge on Wikimedia projects through releasing the books. He also urged librarians to come forward and plan digitisation projects. The whole event was well covered by local newspapers and portals.

CIS-A2K and KWUG have decided to develop the digitisation project for Kannada and Tulu languages. The librarians and archivists have also assured to provide their expertise in building the metadata and public domain books corpus. The collaboration regarding the GLAM projects was explored during the visits to heritage village Pillikula, St. Aloysius college museum with Prof. Vishwanatha Badikana and Bharathesha Alasandemajalu.