Grants talk:IEG/Making telugu content accessible

Copyright and access

Hi! I'm curious what the copyright and access rights are to the Digital Library of India's content. Are these books freely available to at least read for anyone, online? Cheers, Ocaasi (talk) 21:34, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Ocaasi, Books in Digital library of India are freely available as scanned copies for reading and are unreadable by any program. There are more than 23,000 books in telugu on Digital Library of India, of which booked out of copyright as per date(published before 1953) are around 15,000. My attempt is to create a searchable catalog with brief description in telugu for these copyright lapsed books as per date.--Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 10:16, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

• As per the information on DLI website, right holders(Author/Publisher) have given their approval for scanning and hosting their books on DLI site. As the site mentions that it follows India copyright act, all the books on the site can be treated as copyright free. In the past, DLI used to display a special search option called search in copyright freed books. Nowadays, it is no longer present, hence all the books in DLI can be treated as copyright freed.--Arjunaraoc (talk) 05:21, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Arjuna, could you please share the link about your statement right holders(Author/Publisher) have given their approval for scanning and all the books on the site can be treated as copyright free.. It will be help for all of us who are uploading book in commons from DLI. That will be a full proof for us to retain all book in Commons. Jayantanth (talk) 04:43, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

• Jayantanth, As per Presentation by Department of Public libraries slide 21 provides information about approaching the Author/Publisher for permission. You can also see the general information about content selection by going to link "content selection" on http://www.dli.gov.in/, which describes the approach used. Hope that helps. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 05:36, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

• Thank you for providing furthur more information--Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 05:57, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• Pavan santhosh.s, I would like to caution you about Indian copyright law. A book published before 1953 becomes public domain in 2014, only when the copyrights are held by Publishing organisation. If the copyrights are held by author, then that becomes public domain, only after lifetime author +60 years. For more information, please see w:Copyright_law_of_India.--Arjunaraoc (talk) 05:37, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Previous effort

In 2013 Feb, I contributed and coordinated a similar initiative for 2265 titles with title, author information of Archive.org, which are originally from DLI. The approximate actual effort was 80 minutes for 100 books. I am sharing this as it may be useful for this proposal. The proposal includes capturing summary information, which may take more time, but I doubt the utility of that information, unless such information is captured as a wikipedia article for that book.-- (talk) 05:30, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

• Arjunaraoc Thanks for your response. I've already gone through the catalog you have mentioned. There is a major difference between your effort and my proposal. As per my understanding your team transliterated the information given in DLI page and my proposal is to build the catalog from the information present inside DLI books. So, the proposed catalog may contain better information. and it is nearly impossible to create catalog for 80 books in 100 min unless it is transliteration. If we consider transliteration for creating catalog, DLI itself having many errors on title itself. For example, there is a title name "10048 chilaban'di anubhraatrxsauhrxdamu" and if transliterated as it is, makes no sense and leaves no clue even the book is from telugu language. Actually name of the book is "Chilabandi anu bhratru hrudayam"(cilabaṇḍi anu bhraːtṛ hṛdayam). Many of DLI titles have the same problem. DLI did not mentioned the author/editor of many books. creating another catalog basing on that information may not be so useful. So, I've proposed this alternative approach of taking in puts directly from digital books rather than from DLI page. As you've already said summery may result in creation and development of wikipedia pages of those books. In addition, Many of DLI books can be used as sources for wikipedia articles(other than the article about that book), by providing summary information in catalog wikipedians can easily identify the relevant books that my be helpful in their contributions. This may improve the quality of articles in telugu wikipedia. Basing on summary information that will be given in catalog, someone can create list of source books for specific wiki project or wiki portal. This may result many other similar utilities.--Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 12:33, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• Pavan santhosh.s, Thanks for your response. I am glad that you are aware of the previous effort. The home page of the previous initiative has page views of 410 for 2014-03, which gives an indication of its usefulness, as people who search for title or author in Telugu will get to this page, after visiting the page in which that book appears. The title and author fields are critical, in my experience, almost all books from DLI, which were put on archive.org have that information. Subject and few other fields might be missing for some books. As the transcription to Telugu was done manually, the potential alternative spellings of romanized Telugu names are corrected by contributors without the need to refer to the individual book pages. So I feel that obtaining the digital catalog and transcribing to Telugu with focus on title, author and other available fields will be more efficient and highly useful if the e-grandhalya alternative can't be pursued. As I clearly mentioned the effort statistics were for the stated scope of the previous project. In order to have better estimate for your proposed project, it will be better, if you can attempt working on sample set of books(may be about one day's effort) and then update your estimate/plan, which also strengthens your proposal. Usually catalogs have only subject identifiers and do not have summary meaning annotated bibliography information. Summary is only useful in a specific research context and is better done by Research scholars. Also creating Wikipedia entries for each book will have its own problems like Notability, relevance on primary source and also potential for treating such work as paid editing.--Arjunaraoc (talk) 04:11, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Explore synergies with e-Grandhalaya project and Digital library of India

User:Pavan santhosh.s, Thanks for putting up the first IEG from Telugu wiki projects. As I have explored this topic a lot in my involvment with Wikipedia, I would like to suggest an alternative approach. The catalog of AP libraries is digitalised and is available online through the department website. As bulk of the DLI books are from major libraries, it would be useful to explore with AP Department of libraries department and Digital libraries of India to make their catalog accessible for search engines and also add a link to DLI catalog page. This will reduce the typing effort and has the potential to benefit the public and wikipedia, as readers will be able to utilise local libraries for borrowing books they find useful after browsing on the DLI or getting to know through Wikipedia. I understand that this may call for support and technical skills from Wikimedia India Chapter and/or Center for Internet and Society-A2K(Affiliate organisation) and suggest you to contact them. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 05:41, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

• Hi! Thank you for your suggestion. The main aim of this project is to provide better accessibility of non copyrighted telugu books which are in digital form. Though it a good idea, I do not feel it may add any value to this project. Idea of providing searchable catalog of various local libraries may not fit in scope of this project. And I am in touch with Center for Internet and Society-A2K regularly and they extended what ever support i've asked earlier.--Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 12:34, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• Pavan santhosh.s, I think you misunderstood my comment as creating catalog of the local libraries. I did not mean that. The catalog is already available and accessible on net based on the link I refered and selecting "Search your book" menu option. As bulk of the books for DLI were taken from the libraries in Hyderabad, i.e State central library and City central library, the effort to create catalog for DLI can be reduced and the user benefit can be maximised, by linking the Department of Public libraries (DPL) catalog to the DLI scan page, which unfortunately has not been done by DPL. Then Telugu wikipedians and readers will also get the benefit as English users as per Wikipedia:Book sources. For general information on other library related IEG project that has been useful, you may refer to w: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-03-05/News and notes. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 04:32, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Useful project

This project of Pavan Santhosh is one of the good steps forward to make available the vast volumes of Telugu language books available in the Internet Archieves and Digital Library of India. He has the knowledge and commitment for completing the task; as we have been observing his work in Telugu wikipedia. Information about these books once accessable on the Internet is likely to be used by public in reading them, for creating articles in Wikipedia; and if copyright free to be put in Telugu Wikisource. The earlier work of Arjuna Rao in Telugu wikisource (colloborated by me and Sujatha) has helped me to put about 50 copyright free books in Telugu wikisource and I have created some articles in Telugu Wikipedia. If this complete list is available, much more contribution/expansion would be going to happen there. The proposed project of Center for Internet Society[1] that includes Digitalization of Telugu language books would add value to this work. Combining this with real library cataloguing work (as proposed by Arjun Rao) may create confusion; as both are different issues.--Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 05:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• Rajasekhar1961, Thanks for your feedback about the utility of the Archive.org Telugu book catalog transcription project. I think you misunderstood my suggestion about the e-grandhalaya as well. I have provided additional information in that section, which you may find useful.--Arjunaraoc (talk) 04:39, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Some Suggestions

Hi, was browsing through and landed on this project idea. Writing this as a Wikipedian who is interested in Telugu language and culture. As a Telugu speaker and writer I appreciate the effort that is long pending. In principle this is good project idea. Some suggestions though.

• Please don't do what Arjunaraoc is done here. This is as good as not doing anything. Most of the DLI entries are transliterated, I think. And DLI entries are anyhow bad.... the transliteration is even worse. Better to do something between a catalog and an annotated bibliography. This will really make the DLI Telugu collection really accessible not just for Telugu Wikipedians but anyone interested.
• Don't get carried away by numbers like 80 in 100 minutes etc. Do quality work which would require more time. I think you have proposed right amount of time.
• The copyright advise you are getting about DLI is wrong. So suggest that you consult someone before deciding which books you will choose.
• I am surprised that e-grandhalaya is being prescribed. This long time pilot has not seen much momentum. So do not get distracted.
• No need to get entangled with any entity. Do it as a volunteer. Unless any of the suggested entities really comes forward to help, which I seriously doubt. Not sure if they even have the internal capabilities.
• I am assuming you are a book lover. Don't do it unless you enjoying reading books.

Cheerio — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 114.143.170.2 (talk) April 7, 2014 (UTC)

CIS A2K

Hi, being rather keen to promote access to literature in Indic languages as a matter of principle, I am really happy to see this topic beeing looked at again. One formal question, because the actual proposal doesn't say something about it either way. Is CIS aware of this initiative and has agreed to help by providing its blog's platform? :) Thank you and best reagards, --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 18:19, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• Hi Jan eissfeldt, I am regularly in touch with CIS A2K people(mainly User:Visdaviva), I've already informed User:Visdaviva about my proposal and requested Center for Internet and Society's help for providing blog's platform. I got acceptance informally before submitting the proposal here. Regards, --Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 14:59, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Pavan santhosh.s, for both the quick and the very reassuring response. This sounds perfectly sensible to me :o) Best regards, --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 18:46, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Questions about catalogue tool, and community engagement

Hi, Santhosh, thanks for submitting this proposal - it is really exciting to see some engagement from the Telugu community here!

I've got 2 questions for you:

1. What do you plan to use for creating the catalogue itself - ie, is there an existing catalogue tool that you'll use for inputting the 6000 book entries?
2. I understand that you plan to post links to the catalogue in various locations where Telugu Wikimedians can find them, so they'll have access to this resource for use in Telegu projects (Wikipedia etc). But, I wonder if you also plan to do any active community organizing to encourage people to use this resource? I hope you will give this some thought, because I don't think it is enough to just create the resource - I would prefer to to see some measures of success that demonstrate your resource is being used, not just that it exists, and this may take some extra efforts.

Best wishes, Siko (WMF) (talk) 20:34, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• Hi Siko (WMF), Thanks for your response. Here are my answers:

1. I'm planning to enter the data in excel sheet. By doing so the data can be processed by many softwares and bots.
2. In Hyderabad and Bangalore cities, Telugu wiki community meets are being organized monthly. In those monthly meet ups, I'm planning to organize demonstrations to telugu wikimedians about the usage of these catalogue in creating and developing articles. Along with this demonstrations Edit-a-thons will be organized in those meetings. In addition to this I am planning a month long program which benefit many wiki projects and portals. But that can be done after discussions with telugu community. All the above said efforts may result in improvement of quality of articles with more accurate sources from DLI books and also increase in number of articles. Edit-a-thons and other efforts can result in improving quality of at least 1000 articles and creating 100 new articles.--Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 08:59, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 1 2014

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 1 2014 review. Please feel free to ask questions here on the talk page and make changes to your proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 1 2014 begins on 21 April 2014, and grants will be announced in May. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--Siko (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

database interaction

Something one doesn't have to tackle right now but we should be mindful about in reasoning how to set up the best possible system is how this project could (if so) be linked with Wikidata in a mutually beneficial way for both the accessibility of telugu content and its representation in Wikidata. I don't have a good answer up my sleeve but it strikes me reading the draft there is some potential one might would like to explore. Best regards, --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 18:56, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

I think the question of how massive book metadata gets incorporated into Wikidata is still very much up in the air and waiting for more systematic treatment, so it would be best left out of the context of this narrower proposal. (What has been established so far in Wikidata, AFAIK, is a set of guidelines in the context of sourcing statements, but clearly focusing on case-by-case representation, rather than mass importation of catalog metadata.)

Since the data produced would be useful for any future integration into Wikidata, once a general approach has been defined and developed, I think it suffices for now. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 22:48, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Paid editing

So in short you're proposing to be paid for writing articles on books on Wikipedia, right? Is there an indication that such articles fit the inclusion standard of the Wikipedia in question? Wikipedia is not a catalogue, so this project seems more suitable for a collection on archive.org. --Nemo 07:18, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

This project is not about me writing articles on Telugu Wikipedia. It is about creating accessibility to digital reference sources that in turn could help Telugu Wikimedians to improve Telugu Wikipedia and Telugu Wikisource qualitatively and quantitatively. If you have any specific suggestions I would welcome it.--Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 08:28, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Continuity

This would no doubt be a valuable meta-resource for Telugu content in general, and Telugu Wikipedia in particular.

What are your plans regarding continuity? That is, what do you envision happening to this catalogue after the project ends? Does it just stay as-is? Does it continue to be updated and expanded by volunteers? Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 23:04, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) for your response. what ever I'm proposing to do can be extended in future either by volunteers or others interested. After this project, I may also come back and add more books whenever I find little time that I can dedicate for this purpose. A couple of telugu wikipedians have already expressed interest to contribute to this in future.--Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 06:36, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Bibliographic best practice

For the summarizing part of the proposed work, do you have any bibliographic training? While I understand this is not to be a professional bibliographic effort, it would be great if you discussed it with a professional bibliographer (ideally with Telugu context) to get some basic tips about best practice in creating paraphrases and summaries, or at the very least, that you read through some written resources (e.g. from a quick web search, [https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/02/ this one), so that the benefit from this one-time time-intensive process is maximized. Is this part of your plan? If not, would you consider including it? Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 23:04, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Also, perhaps offering keywords alongside a free-text summary for each title would be useful too. I don't know if a standardized vocabulary like LCSH exists for Telugu (ask the DLI?), but even if not, thinking about a set of keywords to consistently apply (like tags on a blog, but more consistent :)), would be useful for users and re-users of the catalogue you produce. Here, again, advice from and consultation with professional bibliographers would be useful. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 23:04, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

It is a valuable suggestion. I'm not having any professional bibliographic training till now. I'll reach out to professional bibliographers (working in publishing industry and academies established by govt.) who can help me. And coming to another point you have raised, I would like to add keywords also. I'll find out is there any Standardized vocabulary present for telugu. I may contact library science professional for that. Thanks for related links you have shared here. I found out some useful tips in them.--Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 06:40, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi! This is an update regarding this question. I've spoken to an experienced Library science professional about this project. He has wide experience in the field of bibliography(in telugu). I was informed that there is no standardized manual regarding keywords. he has given some suggestions and I'll use them. Once again thanks for your suggestion.--Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 06:49, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Making Telugu Content Accessible

Scoring criteria (see the rubric for background)	Score 1=weak alignment 10=strong alignment
(A) Impact potential Does it fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities? Does it have potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	5.3
(B) Innovation and learning Does it take an Innovative approach to solving a key problem? Is the potential impact greater than the risks? Can we measure success?	5
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in 6 months? How realistic/efficient is the budget? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	6.4
(D) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support? Does it support diversity?	6.3
Comments from the committee: The project could create the base for a lot of content. This fits well with Global South priorities, as the project will enable Telugu contributors to write articles on something of interest to them. Some concerns about adaptability - we do not see how it could be adapted to other languages, and, we wonder how the catalog will be updated after the grant ends when the DLI collection will increase. If the catalog is not frequently updated then it will not adaptable for other uses. Indexing books is not an innovation by itself, but the expected impact seems worthwhile for the cost. The initiative is solving a useful problem for small languages or not documented languages. Measures of success are given; they are clear and reasonable. Budget and timeline seems very reasonable, and the scope is achievable. We appreciate seeing the project has support from the local community. Participant may have the necessary skills, but working alone is always a risk. There should be collaboration to engage the community and bring attention to this new material. Without engaging multiple parties, the work done during the grant will likely end as soon as the funding stops. We would like to see a concrete plan for how the data will be published and how others can use it other than creating an excel file.

Thank you for submitting this proposal. The committee is now deliberating based on these scoring results, and WMF is proceeding with it's due-diligence. You are welcome to continue making updates to your proposal pages during this period. Funding decisions will be announced by the end of May. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 00:01, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Please contact WMF

Hello Pavan santhosh.s: As part of the due-diligence process, we need determine if you are eligible to receive a grant. In order to do this, we need some information about you personally. It is important that we complete this step prior to announcing the final decisions for this round by the end of this week. Please contact us at grantsadminwikimedia.org. Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Sincerely, -- Jtud (WMF) (talk) 17:06, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Jtud (WMF) Sorry for my late reply. Your mail mistakenly sent to spam by my account and the reason I couldn't notice your mail till you approach on wiki. I've sent you the details you've asked through that mail. Regards, --Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 16:57, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I was afraid that might have happened, Santosh. Thank you for sending the requested information, and I'm confirming receipt. Best regards, Jtud (WMF) (talk) 17:11, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Round 1 2014 Decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, Rs. 104,000

Comments regarding this decision:
We encourage you to incorporate as many volunteer collaborators into your project as you can, since it appears you have captured the interest of the Telugu community with this project. We are looking forward to learning along with you!

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

Questions? Contact us.

Thank you for selecting my project for IEG and I'm excited on being first telugu IEGrantee. I'm thankful to telugu wikipedians and other wikimedians responded here. Regarding the comments, I'm going to request the active telugu wikipedians to help this project and prior to that I'll inform telugu community by village pump and also personal notes too. Once again thanks to IEG committee members.

Regards,

--Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 06:57, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations

Congratulations Pavan santhosh.s on your proposal getting selected for the Grant. Best wishes.--Arjunaraoc (talk) 10:58, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Arjunaraoc garu Thank you --Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 13:16, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations Pavan santhosh.s! You are the first Telugu Wikimedian to get the IEG!! Best wishes. --Visdaviva (talk) 05:36, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Edit-a-thons expenses

I need another Rs.10000 to meet the measure of success regarding improving quality of 1000 articles and developing 100 articles out of these books. I've conduct nearly 5 edit-a-thons in 5 diff. cities and towns for meeting this. And along with this amount I need a sum of Rs.300 as a bank wire fee that will be deducted by the bank. Please accept these changes in total approved grant funds.
Regards,
--Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 07:56, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this as follow-up to our emails on this subject, Pavan santhosh.s. Confirming that I'm approving this request for an additional 10,000 rs. to cover travel expenses and any materials needed for the edit-a-thons, and 300 rs. for bank fees. So the total amount of your IEGrant is now 114300 rs. Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:38, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your speed response. Regards, -Pavan santhosh.s (talk)