Marathi Wikipedia Workshop & 1lib1ref session at Goa University

As this was the first exposure to Wikimedia projects, a two day extensive training workshop was planned. In the same event, a three hour session in library as part of 1lib1ref session was also conducted. CIS-A2K has partnered Goa University for conducting the event which attracted a footfall of 36 participants.

Primary objectives

The following objectives were broadly covered in the sessions held at Goa University campus on 31 January and 1 February 2019:

• Awareness about digital knowledge in Marathi, Open knowledge resources and Wikimedia projects.
• Explain participants the history of Wiki movement and the pillars of Wikipedia.
• Train the participants in basic editing skills in Wikipedia.
• Explore the ways to find reliable and verifiable references.
• Present the article structure, manual of style, and categorization.
• Explain copyright, Commons guidelines and uploading images on Wikipedia.
• Discuss follow-up plan and integration with academic activities.
• Add reliable references as part of 1lib1ref session in library.

The Workshop

The practice of Marathi typing in Unicode was carried out through preparing articles as Word document. The students selected the articles on history of Goa, writers and artists of Goa, tourism in Goa and villages in Goa. Participants learnt basic editing skills, adding references and uploading on Commons. They worked first in sandboxes on their new articles. The content addition is in progress. The verified content would be moved to main namespace under the guidance of experienced editors.

The concept of 1lib1ref campaign was shared with Chief Librarian of Goa University. The response was very positive. As a result, in the last two sessions of the workshop on 1 February, the participants added references to the articles. The session was conducted in the library. The library staff and faculty facilitated the process.

Follow-up

The editors are preparing the articles in sandboxes and offline also. It is proposed to conduct another iteration to verify and publish this content in main namespace. The students are also taking the images of issues related to Goan culture. The exclusive session on Commons is also proposed. The librarian has suggested making separate rack of reference books related to Goa culture and heritage for utility. This idea will be explored in the next 1lib1ref iteration in May-June 2019.

For more info see the Meta report