2023:Program/Entertainment/NBDBU9-The Volunteer Archivists — Screening and Discussion
Title: The Volunteer Archivists — Screening and Discussion
Speakers:
Subhashish Panigrahi
Subhashish Panigrahi is a public-interest archivist, researcher, non-fiction filmmaker, and civil society leader from India. A National Geographic Explorer, he has directed and produced nine critically acclaimed nonfiction films, including “MarginalizedAadhaar”, “Nani Ma,” the first documentary in the Baleswari-Odia dialect, and “Gyani Maiya”. His films often focus on conserving endangered languages, digital rights, and the open internet movement, particularly in South Asia. He has created a speech data repository in his native language Odia and dialect Baleswari-Odia, that has a total of over 62,000 audio recordings, the largest in the language and all under a Universal Public Domain Release (CC0 1.0).
Subhashish Panigrahi
Room: Plenary Hall
Start time: Fri, 18 Aug 2023 13:40:00 +0800
End time: Fri, 18 Aug 2023 14:00:00 +0800
Type: Entertainment session
Track: No (pretalx) track id specified
Submission state: confirmed
Duration: 20 minutes
Do not record: false
Presentation language: en
Abstract & description
[edit source]Abstract
[edit source]This would be the public premiere of The Volunteer Archivists, a 2022 documentary short directed and produced by Wikimedian Subhashish Panigrahi. It tells the story of Srujanika, a group of volunteers from India who achieved most of the rarest Odia-language publications published since 1807, including over 10,000 book volumes. The film would be followed by a discussion with the director.
Description
[edit source]Srujanika accomplished the seemingly impossible task of digitally archiving the last 200 years of printed publications in India’s Odia language. The archive, Odia Bibhaba, includes over 10,000 book volumes, 127 magazine titles and 21 newspapers, and, most importantly. Many titles on the Odia Wikisource are from Odia Bibhaba. Their first and the monumental archiving of a monumental publication, the Purnnachandra Ordia Bhashakosha, was the basis for the 100K+ entries of Odia Wiktionary. Srujanika was the pioneer of many open-source and open-knowledge initiatives in Odia. The film captures their four-decade-long journey of making science popular outside the classroom among children, a wide range of science exploration publications in Odia, archiving most Odia publications that otherwise would have perished, and contribution to the Openness movement. This session would include a public screening of a revised version of the film and an interaction with the director who made this film as a volunteer about other volunteers.
Further details
[edit source]Qn. How does your session relate to the event themes: Diversity, Collaboration Future?
The film itself depicts a language which, despite being the official language for an Indian province of 45 million people, saw the printed heritage being perished. The film is a product of a long-term collaboration between the director and a collective of volunteers. From frugal archiving techniques to using open-source tools to archiving the writings of many writers is a path towards diversity. Hopefully, the film and the discussion following the screening would inspire future archivists within the Wikimania participants who would do the same for the printed publications in their own languages.
Qn. What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
Qn. What is the most appropriate format for this session?
Onsite in Singapore- Remote online participation, livestreamed
- Remote from a satellite event
- Hybrid with some participants in Singapore and others dialing in remotely
Pre-recorded and available on demand
