2025:Program/OpenSpeaks Archives: Language digital archive for Wikimedia projects
Session title: OpenSpeaks Archives: Language digital archive for Wikimedia projects
- Session type: Lecture
- Track: Diversity & Inclusion
- Language: en
đ„ Session recording: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WIKIMANIA_Day_3_Nyeri_-_OpenSpeaks_Archive;_Language_digital_archive_for_Wikimedia_projects.webm đ„
This session will detail OpenSpeaks Archives, which was born in 2024 as a digital archive for low-resourced languages. Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wiktionary require extensive citation. However, entries related to low-resource languages do not have historical written records of being subject to colonial and other oppressions or being spoken and not written. OpenSpeaks Archives ran a pilot, identifying gaps in the intersection of low-resourced languages and Wikimedia projects and addressing those gaps by creating a workflow to create citable audiovisual language media. The media helps add depth to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia project entries and provides citations for each uploaded file.
Description
This session aims to discuss two broader diversity issues within the Wikimedia movement: a) lack of oral history from low-resourced languages and b) lack of citations for such oral history.
From the first pilot of OpenSpeaks Archives, we learnt about the structural barriers behind less low-resourced language oral history in Wikimedia projects. This session will highlight what it might take to build such oral history media and considerations for Wikimedia projects. Historically, unprocessed media files have fallen under the "original research" criteria and have been undermined, reducing their use as representational media rather than knowledge sources. Based on the recent pilot supported by a Wikimedia Foundation grant, the session will detail how GLAM partnerships could help cite these media files. This way, oral knowledge will be regarded at par with other sources and Indigenous knowledge will not be treated as inferior to Western forms of knowledge dissemination.
- How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 â Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?
This session will focus directly on inclusion for being about about Indigenous and low-resource languages and speaker communities. Additionally, it will detail about two international GLAM collaborations and their impact. Lastly, it reimagines the sustainability of oral knowledge and its citation in the context of the sustainability of the Wikimedia movement.
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
Resources
Speakers
- Subhashish Panigrahi
- Subhashish Panigrahi is a Wikimedian, low-resourced-language archivist and filmmaker. Together with couple of other Wikimedians, he revived the Odia Wikipedia. He previously served the Asia and the larger Wikimedia community through positions at the Wikimedia Foundation and the Centre for Internet and Society. He founded OpenSpeaks, an open educational resource for language documentation, which has long served the Wikimedia movement for capacity and content building.