The Wikisource Loves Manuscripts (WiLMa) initiative was inspired by the Balinese community’s mission to preserve their manuscript heritage. With support from the Internet Archive, they digitized around 3,000 lontar manuscripts, which represented approximately 90% of Bali’s literature. Later, PanLex was brought in to build an on-screen Balinese keyboard so that anyone could easily transcribe the manuscripts. Eventually, the community identified Wikisource as a more sustainable platform with existing communities that could be engaged in their mission. In 2021, Balinese Wikisource was launched. This 10-year effort by the Balinese community suggested that the digitization and transcription of manuscripts could help to bring underrepresented languages to the Internet. The Wikimedia Foundation wanted to explore what kinds of support could help to accelerate and grow such projects.
Scaling the approach in Indonesia
In February 2023, the Wikimedia Foundation launched a pilot in two more Indonesian languages along with Balinese, in partnership with Pusat Pengkajian Islam dan Masyarakat (PPIM), a research institute based in Jakarta, and Wikimedia Indonesia. The pilot not only focused on digitizing manuscripts from three major islands of Indonesia but also sought to engage Wikimedia communities to transcribe the manuscripts on Wikisource. Additional capacities were brought to the project, through partnerships, leading to co-organized events with the UNESCO Jakarta Office; a content donation from the British Library; a technical partnership with READ-COOP to use their text recognition tool, Transkribus; and communications support from Indonesian media house, Tempo.
In February 2024, the WiLMa pilot concluded, having digitized 28,000 manuscript pages, which was 42% more than the target. PPIM then hosted a series of follow-up proofreading workshops in Jakarta, Yogyakarta and West Sumatra, to further engage students and language learners in each of the languages.
Here is what a participant shared after participating in one such workshop:
Hopefully Wikisource can become a digital forum to make it easier to study and research manuscripts
Improving Wikisource infrastructure to support complex documents
The Wikimedia Foundation also partnered with a team at IIIT Hyderabad, India, to test the efficacy of Transkribus and build an initial Balinese Transkribus model. The Foundation also contracted two fellows to provide further technical support to the Wikisource community, most notably integrating Transrkibus into Wikimedia OCR. After several unsuccessful attempts to create a Transkribus model for Javanese handwritten manuscripts, we followed the recommendation of User:Bennylin, a Javanese contributor and pivoted to creating a Transkribus model for printed Javanese documents. One of the Javanese editors reflected that the print model is “pretty good but I hope it will be better”.
Spreading the spirit of Wikisource Loves Manuscripts
In October 2023, we selected 22 people (from more than 120 applicants) to join a global Learning Partners Network to share insights and resources from the pilot in Indonesia, such as manuscript digitization guidelines. 12 participants successfully completed the 6-month training and follow-up projects are already underway:
- Irvin Sto. Tomas from the PhilWiki Community UG engaged his community to grow the Wikisource community in the Philippines. Due to their efforts, Bikol Central Wikisource was launched in October 2024.
- Assamese contributor Animesh secured Wikimedia Foundation funding for a pilot project to document and digitize ancient manuscripts. Read more about Animesh’s aspirations for the project in this interview.
Another exciting development is that two allied entities, Archive Nepal and Jadavpur University’s School of Cultural Texts and Records, were funded in the latest round of the Knowledge Equity Fund to work with manuscripts on Wikisource.
On the other hand, launched in April 2024, Malay Wikisource community has also been focusing on bringing Malay manuscripts online.
Finally, there is an exciting update from where this all started; Bali. The Balinese community is planning a multi-year project to document all of the Balinese manuscripts held in institutions around the world. Their grant proposal WikiSami: Sum of All Manuscripts Bali is currently under review with the ESEAP regional fund committee.
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