CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/May 2024

In the Limelight: Openness for Cultural Heritage

The digital space has revolutionized the way we interact with cultural heritage, but it also poses significant challenges to accessibility, shareability, and reusability. Many cultural heritage assets are locked behind copyright restrictions, making it difficult for scholars, artists, and the general public to engage with them freely. This disconnect between people and heritage hinders the ability to learn from the past, shape the present, and envision the future.

In recent years, institutions have begun to open their collections online, recognizing the benefits of open cultural heritage. By making cultural heritage openly available, institutions can: Easier Access: Openly shared cultural heritage is easier to find, reaching broader and more diverse audiences. Preservation: Digital preservation and refinement of cultural heritage ensure its long-term safeguarding. Legal Certainty: Openly shared cultural heritage can be reused with more legal certainty, reducing the risk of copyright infringement. More Resilient Institutions: Open cultural heritage leads to more resilient and relevant collection holders.

The benefits of open cultural heritage extend beyond institutions, impacting research, education, and creativity. It fosters: Vibrant Research: Open cultural heritage enables more participatory research and education. Dynamic Creativity: Artists and creators can remix heritage into new works, promoting cultural innovation. Just and Democratic Societies: Open cultural heritage contributes to more just, democratic, diverse, free, and equitable societies.

By embracing open cultural heritage, we can bridge the gap between people and heritage, creating a multitude of connections and fostering a collective understanding of our shared cultural wealth. As UNESCO emphasizes, "a world without culture is a world without a future." It is our responsibility to ensure that our cultural heritage is accessible, shareable, and reusable for the benefit of all

Monthly Recap

Digitisation Workshop

CIS-A2K and Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir library jointly organised a 'Digitisation Workshop' for old libraries in Maharashtra state of India on 15 may 2024 at Pune. The workshop aimed to empower libraries in preserving and making rare and public domain books available to society. It was attended by 50 members from 15 centennial libraries and 12 other libraries, along with digitisation partners and Wikisource editors. The objectives included digitizing and preserving valuable materials, coordinating digitization projects, and optimizing resources. Topics covered included library management systems, digitization project planning, copyright issues, metadata preparation, and making digitized content accessible on the internet. Hands-on training on scanning and image processing was also provided. The workshop aimed to demystify the digitization process and facilitate best practices among participants. The sessions were conducted by PNVM coordinators and A2K representatives. The hands-on training of scanning process and image processing was also arranged at the venue in the second half. Through this activity the digitisation concept was demystified. It was the first such exposure for all the participants. A social media group was formed to exchange information and discuss progress. Follow-up activities include preparing lists of public domain authors and works, supporting libraries with Unicode and KOHA experts, and planning visits to potential libraries.

• 
  Participants in the Digitisation workshop
• 
• 
• 
  Hands-on training of scanning process
• 
• 
  Digitisation process presentation

Tribal Photography Workshop

A workshop was organized by Shakuntala Marndi in lieu of the Tribal Culture Photography Competition. The event was attended by 22 participants, with the team consisting of Nitesh ji, Gopalakrishna, Ashwini ji, Ramjit, and others. Ramjit and Nitesh ji jointly moderated the workshop, which covered various aspects of the competition. The workshop began with Shakuntala introducing herself and welcoming participants. Nitesh ji briefed about CIS A2K and the tribal photography competition, encouraging participants to participate. Ramjit demonstrated the process of participating in the competition, covering categories, photo size, and quality. Due to a technical glitch, Bodi Baskey and another Santali Wikipedia member continued the demonstration. Gopalakrishna discussed technicalities of photographs, including ownership and copyright options. Ashwini ji briefed about the competition's aim and Santali Wikipedia. Participants were then asked to put their queries, and one-to-one interactions were held. The workshop concluded after two hours, with Ramjit sharing the competition link with all participants. The event ended with a thank you to the participants and the team members for their involvement.

Wiki Technical Training

A capacity building initiative for technical wikimedian is in the works. We believe this will be a good platform for capacity building and an avenue for conversations surrounding the technical challenges specific to wiki communities in South Asia. The Scholarship form was released and the scholarship committee has been finalised. The event will take place 22-23 June, 2024. Stay Tuned for more details.

Dispatches from A2K

The democratization of internet access in India, fueled by affordable data plans, also significantly impacted the Wikimedia movement. There was an influx of users accessing Wikipedia, mirroring the broader pattern of increased internet usage. This development could have presented an opportunity for a growth spurt within the Wikimedia community. However, a critical factor restrained this potential growth: the nascent stages of mobile editing features on Wikipedia.

Initiatives such as Project Tiger and the Wikimedia Foundation's Hardware Donation Program were designed to support contributors who made significant contributions and needed laptops. These contributors either had non-functional laptops or had never owned one, often relying on mobile devices or borrowed computers from schools or colleges. While Project Tiger focused solely on South Asia and has other objectives, the Hardware Donation Program is global in scope and confines itself to the donation of depreciated but still useful hardware assets (majorly laptops) to users who need them. A report on the Hardware Donation Program from 2017-2019 showed that India had the most recipients (12), a trend that continues with many applications still coming from India. This trend highlights the necessity of improving the mobile editing experience to bridge the gap between the experiences of laptop and mobile users as much as possible.

It is a welcoming initiative to see the Wikimedia Foundation is currently investing in improving mobile editing. While there has been significant progress, there is still much work to be done. The global majority Wikimedia technology priorities, to which CIS-A2K made some contributions and is committed to, also considers mobile editing one of the priority aspects. The document says “Considering that 70% of people from the Global Majority exclusively access the Internet using mobile devices, break down barriers that hinder access and contribution to the free knowledge ecosystem by optimizing the mobile infrastructure and prioritizing the development of the visual editor for mobile devices.”

In this context, CIS-A2K conducted a study on the mobile commons app and its contributors in India.

Read the full article here

Coming Soon

Future of Commons Convening

This three day event, scheduled for July 5-7, 2024, aims to bring together a diverse group of stakeholders to explore the evolving relationship between artificial intelligence (AI), Indian languages and digital commons.

Since ChatGPT’s launch, multiple initiatives have been taken to develop generative AI systems in Indian languages, for a variety of uses. The process of training generative AI models requires huge quantities of data. Openly available training data - or digital commons - are critical to developing legitimate, well-performing and versatile AI models.

Archives and museums, as rich repositories of cultural heritage material, have been actively digitising their collections. Collectively, the contribution of public memory and cultural heritage institutions and mass-digitisation programmes undertaken by state and civil society organisations, has been crucial to the development of a digital commons in Indian languages.

Set against this backdrop, the event will delve into ongoing development of ‘localised’ or ‘indic’ generative AI models, state of digital commons, and role of public institutions such as archives and digitisation movements; and explore the interdependencies and tensions between them.