Grants:Project/Rapid/Scanner for Gujarati Wikimedia Projects/Report
- Report accepted
- To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Scanner for Gujarati Wikimedia Projects.
- You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
- You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.
The report of Grants:Project/Rapid/Scanner for Gujarati Wikimedia Projects is as below:
Goals[edit]
Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?
Yes, we met all our goals. The scanner really helped to fill the need of offline sources which was our prime objective. We could create/improve 54 articles on Gujarati Wikipedia due to the scanner and many of them had new references which was made available via Resource Exchange Project. The resource exchange activity grew rapidly due to the scanner which made offline books accessible to the editors. We also made some sources available to editors by having a limited page scans of copyrighted works for private use. In total 49 exchanges happened over the six months grant period.
The planned citation-thon can not be held because we found that making offline citations available takes more time than we believed. In libraries, the books may not be available or loaned to someone which delayed fulfilling the request for offline source. So an online citation-thon did not seem possible.
The project went smooth with making one public domain book available to very small Gujarati Wikisource community every month. They typed/proofread it and made it available to readers. These public domain books are digitised with proofread and made available on the internet for the first time. Total six books were made available in six months while seventh is ongoing. One collection of letters was also made available.
We uploaded 104 public domain/free licensed images to the Commons. We could not find the public domain book with many images (old books tend to have very low number of images) else we would have out done our target. We are in discussion with the Gujarat Vishwakosh Trust, which has published Gujarati Vishwakosh - the multiple volume largest Gujarat encyclopedia, to make their resources available to us. They had gave some five volumes to the custodian editor for free so we can fulfill our requests faster (Gujarati Vishwakosh entry on a topic is the most sought after source on the resource exchange). Due to this, our custodian editor now has 12 out of 25 volumes of Gujarati encyclopedia (he already had 7 volumes of his own). They have agreed to make some of their image collection available on Commons. We have also requested to make their paper images available on Commons and have told that we can take up scanning work which would save their cost of scanning.
During the grant period, our custodian editor/grantee User:Gazal world was recognised as the Wikipedian of the Week (2018-10-28) for his work on English Wikipedia Resource Exchange (where he also made several sources available to English Wikipedians with help of the scanner). The recognition resulted in the news coverage on the front page of the local edition of the widely circulated Gujarati newspaper Divya Bhaskar (news link). It generated the interest in the readers and had large amount of inquiry to the custodian editor for joining Gujarati Wikipedia. We also saw an increase in the activity on the Gujarati Wikipedia.
We also loaned the scanner to Sanskrit Wikipedia/Wikisource editor User:NehalDaveND which helped them making some books and sources available to them.
Our custodian editor went to TWLCon (2019 India) on 5-6 January 2019. He found that Gujarati Wikipedia is an only Indic language Wikipedias where resource exchange is active while other Indic language Wikipedias chiefly focus on translations from other Wikipedias (i.e. English). During discussions, the TWLCon attendees agreed to start a common Resource Exchange Project on Meta for all Indic language Wikipedias next month.
Outcome[edit]
Please report on your original project targets.
We have created tracking Categories.
Project metrics
| Project metrics | Target outcome | Achieved outcome | Explanation |
| 40 resource exchanges | 49 resource exchanges | વિકિપીડિયા:સંદર્ભ વિનિમય પરિયોજના The project page where requests are made and fulfilled requests are archived. We out done our targets. Requests include few book requests by Gujarati Wikisource community as well. | |
| create/improve 50 articles | 54 articles created/expanded | શ્રેણી:સંદર્ભ વિનિમય પરિયોજનાની મદદથી બનાવેલ લેખ શ્રેણી:સંદર્ભ વિનિમય પરિયોજના વડે વિસ્તૃત કરેલ લેખ Editors were able to add sources in new/old articles due to availability of offline sources. 36 new articles were created. 18 articles were expanded. | |
| Scan/avail 6 books | 6 books made available and proofread 7th book proofread ongoing One collection of letters |
For list of books completed, see below. We chose different genres of books. Some more book scans are already uploaded on Commons for future work. Total pages: 1126 | |
| 100 photos on Commons | 104 photos uploaded | Commons:Category:Images scanned by Fujitsu scanner gifted by Wikimedia Some images are uploaded late because they were processed before upload. Many of these images were scanned/made available online for the first time. They were useful in many articles. |
| # | Book | Genre | No. of pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | નિરંજન | Novel | 214 |
| 2 | ગુજરાતની ગઝલો | Poetry | 45 |
| 3 | ગુજરાતનો જય | Historical fiction | 353 |
| 4 | સાસુવહુની લઢાઈ | Social novel | 145 |
| 5 | પુરાતન જ્યોત | Folk stories | 188 |
| 6 | પ્રતિમાઓ | Short stories | 168 |
| 7 | યુગવંદના (ongoing) | Poetry | - |
| 8 | દિવાળીબાઈના પત્રો | Letters | 13 |
| Total pages: | 1126 | ||
Learning[edit]
Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:
- What worked well? What did not work so well? *What would you do differently next time?
- We lost Rs. 500 ($ 7.43) from the grant when we found that wiring fund cost this much. We had not taken the wiring cost into account when we applied for the grant. We should have considered it. Apart from that, the fund were received on time.
- We had applied for the grant by checking the cost of scanner and HDD online on Amazon India website. When we contacted the seller directly, we found that we can save some funds by not purchasing it online. The direct offline deal was done and we saved Rs. 1500 ($22.29). Next time, we will contact sellers directly for offline purchases which might reduce our fund requirement.
- We purchased HDD only after we need it to store material for later retrieval (libraries lend books for few days at a time). We would have asked for few smaller capacity flash drives which can be exchanged and transported easily to exchange resources offline. HDD is also serving as our library for frequently asked sources so serves its purpose well.
- We did not asked for a backpack to store and transport the scanner. We should have considered such accessories when making a grant request. Such accessories protects the equipment.
- While the tracking logbook is helpful in knowing who has the scanner at what time, we found that making scanner available to editors living in the other cities is difficult. During the project period, we could make scanner went to only two cities. The editors live apart in different cities and moving scanner from one location to another depends on the travelling of the editor. Our custodian editor/grantee has been most active and fulfilled our most resource exchange requests.
- In initial months, the resource exchange demand was low. We created awareness by messaging and informing each editor on the Talkpage which resulted in the increased demand. We could have done it earlier or the banner ad would have worked.
- We learned that the collaboration with libraries, museums, publishers and photography community/clubs would have expanded our reach and outcome. (We learned it when we contacted the Gujarati Vishwakosh Trust.)
- The most important learning was that we need many more editors so we can utilise our resources better and faster. Gujarati Wikimedia Community is very small. If we had more editors, we would have been able to create more articles and do more work. We are planning a meetup (Gujarati Wikimedia Community Meetup in Ahmedabad) probably in March 2019 as an outreach programme. The Gujarati Vishwakosh Trust has agreed to lend us their conference hall.
Finances[edit]
Grant funds spent[edit]
Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.
Exchange Rate when applied: 1 USD = 67.28 INR (10 May 2018). The finances below are calculated according to this rate. We had requested exchange rate buffer till 1 USD = 69 INR.
Current Exchange Rate: 1 USD = 71.36 INR (22 January 2019).
| Item | Brand | Quantity | Funds paid to | Amount in INR | in USD | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grants:Project/Rapid/Scanner for Gujarati Wikimedia Projects | Requested Amount Total: | Rs.53000 | $787.75 | |||
| Scanner | Fujitsu ScanSnap SV600 Scanner | 1 | Nisarga Information Technology Solutions | Rs. 45000 | $668.84 | Direct deal with seller instead of online purchase saved Rs. 2500 ($37.15), 1 year manufacturer warranty, book scanner |
| Shipping charge (Scanner) | - | - | - | Free | Free | borne by seller |
| External Hard Disk (HDD) | Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive with Mobile Device Backup | 1 | Amazon India (Appario Retail Private Ltd) | Rs.3999 | $59.44 | 50% (Rs. 4000) discount, 3 years manufacturer warranty, 1 TB |
| Shipping charge (HDD) | - | - | - | Free | Free | |
| Wire charges | Bank of India | Rs. 500 | $7.43 | Fund wired from WMF to grantee, unanticipated cost | ||
| Total: | Rs.49499 | $735.72 | ||||
| Remaining Funds | Rs. 3501 | $52.04 | ||||
Purchase receipts are emailed.
Remaining funds[edit]
Do you have any remaining grant funds? If there are remaining funds, please list the amount here. Remaining funds must be returned to WMF, reallocated to similar activities or applied to another approved grant. Let us know what you'd like to do.
As mentioned above, Rs. 3501 ($ 52.04) remains with us.
Returning remaining fund will cost presumably another Rs. 500 ($7.43) for wire charges as well new higher exchange rate will result in loss of few more fund. So about $42 will reach the WMF. We are planning to organise a meetup (Gujarati Wikimedia Community Meetup) in March 2019. We will be requesting separate grant for it very soon. So if remaining funds allowed with us, we will be utilising it for upcoming Meetup. We will deduct this amount from grant request for the Meetup. If the Meetup does not happen for some reason, we will return remaining funds to the WMF.
Anything else[edit]
Anything else you want to share about your project?
Thank you WMF and Grants:Project organisers (including User:I JethroBT (WMF) who reviewed our grant request) on behalf of Gujarati Wikimedia community for fulfilling our needs. We are grateful to the WMF for listening and taking care of small language editor community like us who are not much visible among the giants. We are those people who lack support of finances, online resources and technical help but we are doing pioneer work in our language (i.e.writing first online Gujarati encyclopedia and digitasing Gujarati public domain book with proofread for the first time). We will strive to do more (like making online fully public domain Gujarati dictionary via Wikidata) and your support will breath life in our struggles. Looking forward.