Book lovers can now read Odia books online with the launching of the Odia Wikisource, a sister project of Odia Wikipedia, here on Friday.
The Odia Wikimedia community, a volunteer community that contributes to Odia Wikipedia and its sister projects, in collaboration with the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) formally launched the facility.
Odia Wikisource houses scores of Odia language books online and is available for free at https://or.wikisource.org. It is not just an online library but it focuses on bringing rare and old books that are out of copyright. Notably, the CIS-A2K, a domain of the CIS, has been instrumental in encouraging many notable authors in the State to change their license terms to Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-by-SA) license, a license that allows public access and ability to reuse the content to expand the knowledge base in Odia language on internet.
Besides, a discussion on setting of a roadmap for Odia book digitization was held on the occasion. later, a documentary on ‘Odia: Silalekharu Mobile’ was screened followed by an award ceremony.
