International partnerships provide foundational content, including rare Urdu texts, for the Wikisource platform to reach this milestone.

The Punjabi Wikimedians User Group has launched an Urdu Wikisource, a free, open source, global digital library for Urdu literature. The group has also urged the Punjab government to ease copyright restrictions, which continue to hamper access to regional languages in the digital domain.

“The launch of Urdu Wikisource marks a turning point for the preservation of South Asian literary history,” Satdeep Gill, manager, content enablement, Wikimedia Foundation, said.

International partnerships provided the foundational content for the platform to reach this milestone, he said. “Rekhta Foundation, the Urdu literary repository, jump-started the project by sharing 10 rare Urdu texts, ensuring the platform launched with high-quality, culturally significant material. The British Library shared seven rare historical texts that were digitised as part of the ‘Two Centuries of Indian Print’ project [2016-2022], bridging the gap between the physical archives in London and digital accessibility for users in South Asia. These texts include Alif Layla, a book of Arabic fables, and a 19th century version of Padmavat, Malik Mohammad Jayasi’s Awadhi poem,” Mr. Gill said.

“Wikisource is unique in the digital ecosystem. Unlike simple image archives, it utilises community-driven transcription to convert scanned documents into digitally searchable text. This makes it an invaluable complementary tool for the Urdu language, allowing researchers and students to search for specific phrases within centuries-old books for the first time,” he said.

The Punjabi Wikimedians User Group is the first Indian language community that became affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation in 2015.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)