GLAM/Newsletter/August 2020/Contents/India report

This Month in GLAM – Volume X, Issue VIII, August 2020

India report

Utilising Occasion for Content donation: A story

On 20 August morning, in Din Vishesh radio bulletin (Special events on this day), I heard about the death anniversary of Jadugar (Magician) Raghuvir, well known magician from Maharashtra, India. I looked for his article in Marathi Wikipedia, only one line was there. Then I searched for more information links on the web. I found a few links related to his magician son and grandson. Through journalists, I could get the contact details of his grandson, magician Jitendra Raghuvir. Incidentally, a reporter friend Madhav Vidwans who works with Bytes of India showed interest in starting editing on Wikipedia with this article. He once attended our Wikimedia orientation workshop, but did not edit. First he started an article in google doc with available information on web. We had online training session on Wiki pillars, basic editing etc.

Meanwhile a session on Wikimedia projects, importance of open knowledge, re-licensing part etc. was conducted with Jitendra, the copyright holder. The declarations of noted authors as well as links on Wikimedia Commons were shared as samples. He discussed with his father and came up with some queries and doubts, which were clarified in the second session. As the day was of memories, emotional for them, they decided to start re-licensing Raghuvir's few images and provided some content for the article. The small online session on OTRS was conducted. Then Jitendra completed selection of images as well as OTRS process. Total 12 images were uploaded on Wikimedia Commons in Category:Magician Raghuvir. The article on Magician Raghuvir was completed on Marathi Wikipedia by Madhav Vidwans with reference material provided by Raghuvir's family. On Raghuvir's death anniversary, this was our tribute to this great magician, who also used his art in the anti-superstition movement, made hundreds of charity shows for building schools, play grounds, community cultural halls etc. and also ran an academy to teach magic for students across the world. Now, Magician Raghuvir's heirs have expressed their desire to re-license Raghuvir's books, videos on learning magic and images in near future.

The similar process was completed with Social Organisation Chaitanya, working for Women Empowerment in four states of India. Chaitanya published a book on Shashi Rajgopalan, one of the pillars of cooperatives movement in India, on her death anniversary - 5 August 2020. I contacted writer and founder Sudha Kothari of Chaitanya requesting for content donation. Online session of key persons was conducted to explain Wikimedia Projects and the process of re-licensing. I shared previous examples of four oraganisations - Jnana Prabodhini, Lek Ladaki Abhiyan, Vigyan Ashram, Saptahik Vivek - which re-licensed and uploaded their content. The organisation positively responded to this and completed OTRS process and released the book on Shashi Rajgopalan. Wikimedian Kalyani Kotkar facilitated the OTRS and uploading process. In future, the publications of Chaitanya on women empowerment and micro-credit movement will be released.

I learnt that, utilising such occasions to convince copyright holders gives good results.

Such content donations by authors and organisations in Maharashtra facilitated by CIS-A2K in the last two years are documented on meta page - Re-licensing in Maharashtra (January 2018 to June 2020)