Campaign for relicensing copyrighted books under Creative Commons licenses

Thiscampaign was started on June 19 and copyright migration process iscomplete for 17 books so far. Once the copyright migration is overthe books—ranging from historical figures and popular personalitiesto regional history—are going to be digitised on Wikisource.

List of books and their authors

Author:GadamGopala SwamyBook:PaschimaGodavari Jillalo Mahatmuni Sancharam,a historical account on Gandhi’s travels and the way he spread hisideology in and around this area.Significance:Thiscan be used in improving articles related to the history of villagesof the WestGodavari district.Swamy is going to publish his magnumopusonthe national movement in West Godavari along with anotherbiographical work about the notable people of the district.

“I dedicate these works to all the people of the West Godavari district. All my efforts will be useful even if one person from West Godavari] reads these works, learns what their ancestors lived for and died for in the national independence movement] and tries to be responsibly contribute to the society. I find this could only be possible through placing it in digital platform like Wikisource.” – Dr. Gadam Gopala Swamy, historian, former professor

Author:KanuriBadarinadh (Historian, Novelist and Journalist)Books:Biographies,short biographies like TanukuTalukulu,YarraNarayana Swamy Jeevitha Charitra,Local Histories like PanaraVishayamu,Maadoothikapuramu,collection of articles on historical, cultural, social and art likeKasyapaVyasalu,Antharvani,Badareenadheeyam,Lochoopu,Annavianukonnavi,VyasaBadarikam,historical fiction like Kavigaru,KoutilyuniNireekshanam.Priority:TheseBooks can be used as resources to create articles about notablepersonalities of West Godavari district, several important personsand events in Andhra pradesh politics and history. Can improvearticles related to West Godavari district, especially about thehistory sections in the village articles.

“Idon’t want these works to be in bookshelf and get wasted by termites.My wish as an author and researcher is to make these works availableto future historians who can make use of it, so that our people getto know the local history” – Kanuri Badarinadh, historian, novelist and journalist. Badarinadh hasdonated some of his books.

Author:KattaSrinivasa Rao, historian, Wikipedian and poetBook:Ganapeswaralayam,ahistorical account of temples of historical importance that werebuilt in Kusumanchi of Khammam district in Telangana. These templesflourished under the Kakatiyadynasty’sreign.Priority:KattaSriniavasa Rao is one of the first line Telangana historians who areworking to rebuild Telangana’s History. This work is result of hisresearch. It contains valuable content about Ganapeswara Temple andgives a glimpse of the sculpture, history and society under  Kakatiya dynasty in Khammam.

Author:VemuriVenkateswara RaoBook:RamanujanNundi atu itu,abook about mathematician SrinivasaRamanujanandhis works in mathematicsPriority:Likemany other Indian languages, Telugu also has a lower number of booksrelated to science and mathematics especially in the contemporarycontext.Thisbook is about Ramanujan Numbers, formulas and a few more works. Italso has description about contemporary mathematics built uponRamanujan’s work. This can be used to improve mathematics relatedarticles in Telugu Wikipedia.

Author:YasaswiSateesh KumarBooks:Okkamata,containsbrief poetic pen portraits that explains about contemporary Telugupoets, Tellakagitamisanthology of Telugu poet Yasaswi’s poetry.Priority:Photosof many contemporary Telugu poets and brief descriptions about themare now under CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. These can be used in Wikipediaarticles about notable poets.

Author:EmmaRauschenbusch CloughTranslator:VivinaMurthyBook: Cheppulu Kuduthu Kuduthu is a translation of Emma Rauschenbusch Clough’s English book “While sewing sandals”. The English book was released in 1899 and is in Public Domain. The Telugu book was translated by Vivina Murthy and was published in 2007 by Manasu Foundation. As the translator had rights on his translated work, he released it under CC-BY-SA 4.0 license to make it freely available to all on our request.Priority: Historical record especially about Christianity in coastal Andhra Pradesh, dalits in 19th century.

Author:GurajadaApparaoBook: Gurujadalu is a compilation of all the works Gurajada Apparao — he is considered as one of the greatest literary figures of modern Telugu literature. The book was edited and published by the efforts of Manasu Foundation and its associates. Apparao’s works are under Public Domain already as per the Indian Copyright Law,. But the critical introduction and some of the translations included in the book were copyrighted by Manasu foundation which they released under CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. This move will help digitize them on Wikisource and make them freely available to Telugu people.Priority: Even Though some of the works of Apparao got digitized on Wikisource, this can showcase his complete literary journey with bringing a vast set of reading for the Telugu readers.

Allof these books were released or agreed to be released under aCC-BY-SA 4.0 license in June and July 2016. Some of these books weredigitized on Wikisource, and the proofreading is going on currently.Some of the the remaining books being scanned and some are uploadedon Wikimedia Commons. The ones that have been uploadedonCommons are being indexedand digitizedonWikisource.

Thenews about all of these license migrated books was shared with theTelugu Wikimedia] community, and also personally with some of thecommunity members like Rajasekhar, Sri Ramamurthy, GullapalliNageswara Rao, Bhaskara Naidu, and a few others who supported invarious stages of digitization like indexing, proofreading, etc.

“Iwish this contribution will go forward in the same way and helpmaking Telugu Wikisource number one in entire Indic Wikisources. Iwill support this work wherever you need and please ask my helpwhenever necessary. Definitely we can collaborate.”-User:Rajasekhar1961, Telugu Wikimedian

Thelist of the books can also be located on theTeluguWikisource.