Grants:IEG/Capacitate student in Bangla typing through Bangla (bn) Wikisource and improve Wikisource

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project:

Capacitate student in Bangla typing through Bangla (bn) Wikisource and improve Wikisource

idea creator:

Belayet Hossain

project contact:

bellayet(_AT_)gmail.com

participants:



grantees: Belayet Hossain, Mahay Alam Khan


summary:

Capacitate student in Bangla typing through Bangla (bn) Wikisource proofreading extension and improve Wikisource content by typing texts from scanned files.

engagement target:

Bangla Wikisource

strategic priority:

Improving Quality, Increasing Participation

total amount requested:

10800 USD


2013 round 2

Project idea[edit]

Bangla is an eastern w:Indo-Aryan language with about 220 million native and about 250 million total speakers,[1] Bengali is one of the most spoken languages, ranked seventh in the world.[2]

With a rich literary tradition arising from the Bengali Renaissance, Bengali binds together a culturally diverse region and is an important contributor to Bengali nationalism. Medieval Bengali literature consists of various poetic genres, including Hindu religious scriptures (e.g. Mangalkavya), Islamic epics (e.g. works of Syed Sultan and Abdul Hakim), translations of Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian texts, Vaishnava texts (e.g. biographies of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu), and secular texts by Muslim poets (e.g. works of Alaol).

Novels were introduced to Bengali literature in the mid-19th century. Rabindranath Tagore, poet, playwright, novelist, painter, essayist, musician, and social reformer, is the best known figure of Bengali literature to the world. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. After the post-partition era, Bengali literature comprises literature of erstwhile East Pakistan and modern-day Bangladesh and of Paschimbanga (West Bengal).

Including Medieval Bengali literary works, most of literary works developed during Bengali renaissance and afterwords till mid-19th century are now available under "Public Domain" license in printed form. Lots of them are also available in PDF, DjVu, Jpg format in web. It is very important to digitize (converting to Unicode) this works to preserve for future. And Bangla Wikisource is a perfect place to store and host them to give access to all without any cost. To do these works OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is very important and useful tool for a language. Though there are some development in Bangla OCR but till now Bangla language does not have any OCR with satisfactory quality. For now the only way to convert them in Unicode and collect them for Wikisource we need to use human hands.

The idea is to conduct series of day long 'Typing camps' or 'Type-a-thons' for High school, College and University students and finally arrange a typing competition to type texts from scanned files in Bangla (bn) Wikisource. In the type-a-thon students will get the training on Bangla input method (typing), how to contribute in Wikisource and Wikipedia.

As pilot the target to conduct at least 6 type-a-thons. One competition to boost the content and participant at Bangla Wikisource.

Project goals[edit]

  • Improve Bangla Wikisource content by typing texts from scanned files.
  • Increase number of Bangla Wikisource texts.
  • Introduce Bangla Wikimedia projects to the student. Specially Wikipedia and Wikisource.
  • Enable student as future contributor to local Wikimedia projects by capacitate them in Bangla typing method.
  • Improve nationwide digital Bangla typing literacy.



Project plan[edit]

Scope:[edit]

Scope and activities[edit]

  • Identify Wikisource compatible content
  • Collect or scan PDFs for Wikisource
  • Upload PDFs to Wikisource or Commons
  • Contact and coordination typing experts and advisers
  • Identify interested schools, colleges and universities
  • Contact with schools, colleges and universities
  • Tutoring students
  • Support tutors
  • Arrange a Typing competition
  • Proof Reading the typed texts
  • Identify leaders to continue the process
  • Arrange a prize giving event
  • Documentation and resources
  • Funding

Tools, technologies, and techniques[edit]

  • Meetings with libraries
  • Meetings with potential advisers
  • Meeting with teachers
  • List of potential content
  • Computer, Scanner, Internet, PDF tools etc.
  • Outreach materials
  • Guidelines and/or samples for teachers, advisers and students
  • Wikimedia merchandise and gifts for volunteers, teachers, students and advisers
  • On-wiki or off-wiki Input method (Keyboard layout)
  • ProofReading extension on Bengali Wikisource
  • Prizes for compition
  • Newspapers,blogs and social media for event marketing.
  • Facebook group to connect the participants and building community.

Proposed Timeline[edit]

Budget:[edit]

Total amount requested[edit]

10800 USD

Budget breakdown[edit]

Number Task Explanation Cost
(USD)
1 Project Management Remunerations for Project Management. 4000$
2 Travel and Accommodation Mentioned activities and events will take place in different parts / districts through out the country. Project Manager, participants and interested Wikipedians will be given travel bursary with accommodation. There will be 4 to 5 events, which will need long distance travel. We are not including any per-diem for any participants or project staff and we kept the projected cost to minimal. 1500$
3 Merchandise (i.e. T-shirt) Estimated production of 350 t-shirts. 1000$
4 Refreashments for Participants Refreshment (3 time ) for participants. Estimated 350 participants during the events. 1000$
5 Printings (i.e. Banner, handouts) For event banners, handouts, name cards and other printing works. 500$
6 Computer, Internet and communications For the project work need laptop, internet connection, telephone for communications. If the Wikimedia foundation wants, we the grantee can lend laptop for the project period and the cost for a Laptop will be decrease 1000$
7 Competition Prizes Participants achieving pre-defined goal will get prize. First ten of them. 1200$
8 Venues Among 7 event 5 will hosting by educational institute. So there no cost at these 5 event for venue. Rest of the events one for general (not only for students) participants and one for price giving ceremony need venue to rent. 300$
9 Unforeseen 3% for unforeseen and extraordinary expenses 300$
Total Amount 10800$

Intended impact:[edit]

Target audience[edit]

All specially students of school, college, university.

Fit with strategy[edit]

  • Increasing reach to students, will aware the students about the Bengali Wikimedia Projects.
  • Improving both quality and quantity of Bengali Wikisource texts.
  • Capacity building in Bengali typing enables student to contribute Bengali Wikimedia Projects.

Sustainability[edit]

This projects is a pilot on only 6 events to see how it will works at different levels (high schools, college or University) of educational institute or in non-institute. Project might be continued with a greater scale by increasing the number of events in same level of institutions and by geological geological coverages.

During the projects with the events there is scope building community and the participants could be tie up with a facebook group and mailing list. All the updates on events and competition will be announce through this group, mailing list as well some local media. So after the grant ends still the participants will be connected with community.

By arranging the competition, project will identify the leaders for future. There are scopes to utilize these leaders for future continuation of the project.

Measures of success[edit]

Short term measures:

  • Increase the number of edits at Bangla Wikisource (measurable).
  • Book or page typed at Bangla Wikisource (measurable).
  • Agreements with other libraries, museums, schools (target)
  • People engagement during the project (measurable).

Long term measures:

  • Existence of Bangla Wikisourcer Community.
  • Increase active users at Bangla Wikisource.
  • Increase texts at Bangla Wikisource.

Participant(s)[edit]

Belayet Hossain[edit]

Belayet Hossain from Dhaka, Bangladesh. FOSS enthusiast, Wikimedian since 2006. Bureaucrat at Bengali Wikipedia and Sysop at Bengali Wikisource. Initiate the Bangla Wikisource project on 2007. Initiate and Worked for Wikimedia Bangladesh chapter formation. Mozilla Rep in Bangladesh. Worked at different ICT4D project with Ankur ICT Development Foundation funded by Spanis Cooperation Foundaiton (AECID), D.net and Bangladesh Telecentre Network funded by IDRC.

Mahay Alam Khan[edit]

Mahay Alam Khan from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Social worker, l10n expert, Fedora Ambassador, Mozilla Rep. Founder member of Bangladesh Open Source Network. Contributor at Bangla Wikipedia and Commons since 2006. General Secretary of Ankur ICT Development Foundation. Worked at project donated by Spanis Cooperation Foundation (AECID).

Discussion[edit]

Community Notification:[edit]

Please paste a link to where the relevant communities have been notified of this proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions, here.

Endorsements:[edit]

Do you think this project should be selected for an Individual Engagement Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. Other feedback, questions or concerns from community members are also highly valued, but please post them on the talk page of this proposal.

  • As a frequent participant in Wikisource and having participated in another Wikisource-related project (see here), I would like to formally endorse this project. My reasons are as follows: (1) The number of books in Bangla Wikisource is very low, only 6, and none has been totally proofread. (2) The community is small, so it needs a bigger outreach effort. (3) Transcribing texts using the mw:Extension:Proofread Page helps to develop OCR technology, so hopefully this project will help to build a corpora of transcribed texts suficiently large so OCR developers can train their models and make the task easier in the future. --Micru (talk) 19:41, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Presently I am working on uploading to commons all old scan book available. There are more than 16000 Bengali scan books available in Digital Library of India. The major problem is community is small ( but litterateur contents are huge) & no good OCR available. ( one good development I saw here.--Jayantanth (talk) 08:00, 24 October 2013 (UTC)


References[edit]