CIS-A2K/Events/Digitisation project with Rajgurunagar Public Library

The meeting was held to start the digitisation project with Rajgurunagar Public Library at Rajgurunagar in Pune district. The meeting was attended by Secretary of library, Vigyan Ashram team and A2K Programme Officer on 29 November 2019. The detailed discussion on the different stages of the project was done before launching of the activities.

Background

Rajgurunagar Public Library was established in 1862. It houses very rare old books. We facilitated the digitisation project proposal sanction process to be completed by State Language Department. This is the first such initiative in Maharashtra. This will give impetus to other libraries across the state. Three other 100+ year old libraries have already contacted us to help in such project.

Facilitators

Secretary of library - Rajendra Sutar
Director, Vigyan Ashram - Dr Yogesh Kulkarni
Subodh Kulkarni - CIS-A2K

Event details

Date : 29 November 2019
Time : 10am to 5pm
Place : Rajgurunagar & Pabal, Maharashtra, India
Venue : Rajgurunagar Public Library & Vigyan Ashram
Participants : 5

Report

The secretary of the library attended our workshop on digitisation & Wikimedia projects. The meeting with key persons of library was conducted at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal. They were introduced to the whole process from creation of metadata, scanning, uploading, OCR etc. at Vigyan Ashram. After the approval from the management the proposal for digitisation of rare books published in 19th century and uploading the content on Wikimedia was developed. The proposal was submitted to Maharashtra State Language Department. We facilitated the process of sanctioning. The volunteers at Vigyan Ashram are trained in whole process. The scanning of 25 rare books is completed. The uploading on Commons and OCR on Wikisource will be done in next two months. The review of progress was taken by library representatives and A2K on 29 November at Vigyan Ashram. The next project of digitising copyright free reference books was discussed with key persons in library at Rajgurunagar.

Update

The books were uploaded on Wikimedia Commons in the following category -

Category:Books with Public Library, Rajgurunagar published before 1900

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