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2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 |


Contents


2024

Documentation of Inscriptions

Project Number NF/PG/2024/0001 Grant Agency / Donors British Library Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Mayooranathan Ratnavelpillai Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2024
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project aims on documenting, digitizing, preserving, and sharing documents and other sources related to the Trincomalee district, assisting in various educational and social studies related to the district. This project will provide encouragement to those engaged in research on Trincomalee and create an online system where they can easily access the main resources they need.

  • Ongoing

History of Medicine Collection in Northern Sri Lanka

Project Number NF/PG/2024/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Prof . Sreeharan , International Medical Health Organization (IMHO) Project Owner Noolaham Foundation
Project Mentor Dr.Sugumar Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2024
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project assists to expose the importance and value of the history of Medicine Collection to society. Generally, people do not know the importance of history in their culture and life. This project will provide great awareness about Medicine Collection in Northern Sri Lanka and will document the major players. events and ideas that played a role in the evolution of the healthcare services in Northern Sri Lanka.

  • Ongoing

Regional Documentation - Ampara

Project Number NF/PG/2024/0003 Grant Agency / Donors University of Toronto Scarborough Libray Project Owner Noolaham Foundation
Project Mentor Mayooranathan Ratnavelpillai Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2024
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Ampara is located 320 km from Colombo. Sinhalese, Tamils ​​and Muslims live in the city. Ampara district has four parliamentary constituencies namely Kalmunai, Sammanthurai, Pottuvil and Ampara. Ampara district is located along the Urogana region. After the tenth century, some of the tribes that inhabited the coast of the present Ampara district played an important role in the administration of the Batticaloa region. Today's Sammanthurai was the capital of the then Batticaloa region. Thirukovil Murugan Temple was one of the famous temples in the East.

  • Ongoing

Digitization of Human Rights Collections

Project Number NF/PG/2024/0004 Grant Agency / Donors Memory of Chelvarani Nadarajah Project Owner Thamilini Jothilingam
Project Mentor Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2024
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Sri Lanka is a country that has a history of thirty years of civil war. The country has seen horrendous human rights violations throughout its history. Many books and articles have been written regarding human rights and the situations in which these fundamental rights are violated and result in unthinkable tragedies. These need to be digitalized since they will highlight the mistakes we made as a society and advise us on what to do in similar situations.

  • Ongoing

Documentation of Panchangam

Project Number NF/PG/2024/0001 Grant Agency / Donors British Library Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Mayooranathan Ratnavelpillai Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2024
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Documenting Panchangams (two types - Trikanitham, Vakyam) is important in the existence of ritual and culture of a society. Panchangams are not only helpful in Hindu formal life matters. These are seen to include scientific subjects such as astronomy, mathematics and planetary positions. Based on them, it will be possible to learn how panchangams influence Sri Lankan Tamil culture, Tamil lifestyle and social issues by documenting panchangams through this project.

  • Ongoing

Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2024

Project Number NF/PG/2024/0006 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Noolaham Foundation
Project Mentor Pathmanaba Iyer Rathina Iyer Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2024
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This is an annual project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation. Under this project, documents lent and gifted to Noolaham by writers and collectors of documents, documents gathered via the various projects conducted by Noolaham, documents that were left out during previous projects conducted by Noolaham and documents that need to be added to the existing collections and multimedia documents are documented in 2024.

  • Ongoing

Transcription of the Ceylon Slave Registries

Project Number NF/PG/2024/0007 Grant Agency / Donors University of Toronto Project Owner Balmforth Mark
Project Mentor Balmforth Mark Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2024
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Between 1818 and 1832, British colonial officials recorded the names of more than 20,000 enslaved people living on the island of Ceylon, the vast majority of whom would be considered Tamil today. The Legacies of Tamil Slavery Working Group seeks to transcribe this registry, work toward its eventual public display, and to think collaboratively with descendants of the enslaved about an interactive public resource with which to teach about Sri Lanka’s history of enslavement.

  • Ongoing

Documentation of Malay and Jawi Collection

Project Number NF/PG/2024/0008 Grant Agency / Donors Hussainmiya Prof. Dr. B.A Project Owner Noolaham Foundation
Project Mentor Hussainmiya Prof. Dr. B.A Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2024
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Professor B.A. Hussanmaniya is working extensively to protect the Malay traditions and culture. His collection includes various important documents which show the uniqueness of the Malay community and Yawi language. The photographs, hand written documents, books and paintings in his collection are needed to be preserved in order to transfer the cultural and language heritage.

2023

Regional Documentation - Trincomalee

Project Number NF/PG/2023/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Ramanitharan Kandiah and Friends Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Mayooranathan Ratnavelpillai Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2023
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project aims on documenting, digitizing, preserving, and sharing documents and other sources related to the Trincomalee district, assisting in various educational and social studies related to the district. This project will provide encouragement to those engaged in research on Trincomalee and create an online system where they can easily access the main resources they need.

  • Ongoing

Eelam Related Tamil's Documents in Tamilnadu India

Project Number NF/PG/2023/0002 Grant Agency / Donors SAIVANERIKOODAM Thamilar Calari Project Owner Dr.Kanaga Sugumar
Project Mentor Dr.Kanaga Sugumar Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2023
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project aims at identifying the documents on Sri Lanka published in India, as well as documents written by Eelam writers in India in the past.

Documentation of Indigenous People

Project Number NF/PG/2023/0003 Grant Agency / Donors NCFP Foundation Project Owner Prashanth Srinivasan
Project Mentor Balmforth Mark Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2023
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project aims to document undiscovered traditions and cultural movements of indigenous peoples with their permission in a contemporary manner without any alteration. Knowing their arts, traditional practices, and spontaneous lifestyles in harmony with nature and establishing new ways and approaches to anthropological and ethnographic perspectives and fields of study in Sri Lanka

Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2023

Project Number NF/PG/2023/0005 Grant Agency / Donors British Library Project Owner Noolaham Foundation
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2023
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Traditional Sri Lankan fields of knowledge such as local history and medicine, astrology, astronomy, literature and mathematics have historically been recorded in palm leaf manuscripts. The purpose of this work is to identify them, properly digitized them and protect them and make them available to our Tamil community.

Sri Lankan Tamil Palm-Leaf Manuscript Library (EAP1551)

Project Number NF/PG/2023/0005 Grant Agency / Donors British Library Project Owner Noolaham Foundation
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2023
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Traditional Sri Lankan fields of knowledge such as local history and medicine, astrology, astronomy, literature and mathematics have historically been recorded in palm leaf manuscripts. The purpose of this work is to identify them, properly digitized them and protect them and make them available to our Tamil community.

  • Ongoing

Uthayan Library Collection

Project Number NF/PG/2023/0006 Grant Agency / Donors Maithri Sabaratnam Project Owner Noolaham Foundation
Project Mentor Sujeevan Tharmalingam Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2023
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

The project intends to digitize the extensive collection of books, periodicals, and papers in the Uthayan Library. The Noolaham Foundation aims to make the library's knowledge available to everyone by digitizing the Uthayan Collection's valuable books and written materials.

  • Ongoing

2022

Caste, land, and labour in Jaffna: a survey and digitization project in Sri Lankan agrarian history (EAP 1450)

Project Number NF/PG/2022/0006 Grant Agency / Donors British Library Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Balmforth Mark Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2022
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This 12-month pilot project will survey and digitize privately held records relating to caste, land ownership, and agricultural labour in Sri Lanka's Jaffna Peninsula, created prior to the island's independence in 1948. The survey seeks manuscript (paper and palm leaf) and printed material relating to the management and ownership of land, labour contracts, and agricultural records. Digitisation will commence with the manuscript collection of William Digby (1849–1904), a late-nineteenth century British author and political organizer who was a vociferous advocate for the reform of British policy in India and intervention in South Asian agrarian poverty.

  • Ongoing

Next-generation AI-based Ecosystem for Noolaham

Project Number NF/PG/2022/0005 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Prashanth Sirinivasan Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2022
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project aims to complete a plan for the project on large scale annotation, storage and analysis of Sri Lankan Tamil content. This is relating to the field of semantic culturomics in which researchers data mine large digital archives to investigate cultural phenomena reflected in language and word usage. The project consists of a language pre-processing layer, language resource layer, processing resource layer and finally a knowledge engineering component which all forms an AI-based ecosystem for analysing Noolaham foundation’s content. The plan would consist of creating detailed proposals for a number of sub-projects involved in each of these layers.

  • Ongoing

Documentation of Sri Lankan Muslim Ephemera

Project Number NF/PG/2022/0004 Grant Agency / Donors University of Toronto Scarborough Libray Project Owner Mohamed Saakir Ibrahim
Project Mentor Thamilini Jothilingam Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2022
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project focuses to document and preserve ephemera which helps to identify the disappearing vernacular elements of the local Muslim communities in Sri Lanka. This would also help to locate and identify historical events, time periods, and biographies of key social, political, and literary figures and their works that are not otherwise archived.

Digitization at Jaffna Public Library 2022

Project Number NF/PG/2022/0003 Grant Agency / Donors Manitha Neyam Trust Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Thayanthan Thirunavukkarasu Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2022
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Noolaham Foundation has already documented some documents from Jaffna Public Library in the past. This project aims to document all the magazines and newspapers available in Jaffna Public library which have not yet been digitized with the intention of long term preservation and usage.

Digital Library Metadata Enrichment 2022

Project Number NF/PG/2022/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Kopinath Thillainathan Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2022
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Noolaham Foundation is in the process of documenting the documents of the Tamil speaking communities through various projects. Its work program focuses on the collection of documents specifically related to documentation-based Tamil-speaking communities. Since its development and digitization, it has compiled a total of 108000 documents since 2005 and has reviewed them, and relied on existing testimonial tools to validate and provide evidence-based metadata for classification-based accessibility. . Realizing the need for this, two metadata Officers will carry out the project after receiving training for metadata Entries.

Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2022

Project Number NF/PG/2022/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Noolaham Foundation
Project Mentor Rathina Iyer Pathmanaba Iyer Project Locations SriLanka Project Period 2022
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This is an annual project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation. Under this project, documents lent and gifted to Noolaham by writers and collectors of documents, documents gathered via the various projects conducted by Noolaham, documents that were left out during previous projects conducted by Noolaham and documents that need to be added to the existing collections and multimedia documents are documented. In 2022.

Tamil Queer Archives

Project Number NF/PG/2022/0007 Grant Agency / Donors Community Welfare and Development Fund Project Owner Thamilini Jothilingam
Project Mentor Thamilini Jothilingam Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2022
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

These social groups that adhere to different attitudes and practices than the general conditions regarding gender identity expression can be generally called Queer social groups. The project will be launched with the aim of documenting literary and non-literary artistic issues related to Queer social groups that are subjected to various forms of oppression and discrimination in the society. This project aims to help research related to Queer community groups in the future, improve their awareness and create social recognition for them through documentation.

  • On hold

2021

Manuscripts Archive

Project Number NF/PG/2021/0005 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna and Batticaloa Project Period 2021
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project to identify and digitize Ola Manuscripts and recording oral histories related to those Ola Manuscripts. This project was created as part of Noolaham’s objective of documenting, digitizing and disseminating knowledge bases associated with the Tamil speaking communities.

Survey and Digital Preservation of Upcountry Tamil Archival Records (Modern Endangered Archives Program Malaiyakam)

Project Number NF/PG/2021/0004 Grant Agency / Donors UCLA Project Owner Thamilini Jothilingam
Project Mentor Thamilini Jothilingam Project Locations Upcountry Project Period 2021
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project will survey existing archival records, commemorative publications, and historical photographs created by Sri Lanka’s Upcountry Tamils since 1948. The Upcountry (HillCountry) Tamils, are the descendants of nineteenth-century Indian laborers brought to work on the country’s British-owned tea, coffee, and rubber plantations who continue to face political disenfranchisement and state-sponsored discrimination in Sri Lanka.

Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2021

Project Number NF/PG/2021/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Noolaham Foundation
Project Mentor Rathina Iyer Pathmanaba Iyer Project Locations SriLanka Project Period 2021
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This is an annual project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation. Under this project, documents lent and gifted to Noolaham by writers and collectors of documents, documents gathered via the various projects conducted by Noolaham, documents that were left out during previous projects conducted by Noolaham and documents that need to be added to the existing collections and multimedia documents are documented. In 2021.

Noolaham Staff's Career Development & Empowerment

Project Number NF/PG/2021/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Visions Global Empowerment Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Jaffna, Batticaloa, Kilinochchi and Hatton Project Period 2021
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

The staff of Noolaham would like to develop their professional skills for the betterment of the activities carried out by Noolaham. They will study and follow additional courses and undergo training to advance their careers. In order to pursue relevant programs and training, they need financial support, especially to pay the course/training fee. The wages they earn from Noolaham are insufficient to meet this need. They also find it difficult to obtain financial support from their families or external sources on their own. Therefore, it is important that Noolaham provide financial support towards their education and training which in turn will improve the quality of their contribution to Noolaham. The employees will also find emotional satisfaction when their requests to improve their career is respected and positively responded to by Noolaham Foundation. This will also increase their commitment to Noolaham. On the other hand, Noolaham should upgrade its mechanisms and procedures in the areas of digitizing, archiving and library management and accounting in keeping with the advances made in these or related fields. Its employees need to possess advanced knowledge and skills in these areas in order to enhance Noolaham’s output. Therefore, investing in a project that aims to build up the strength of Noolaham’s human resources is a top priority of Noolaham Foundation. Noolaham and its staff will improve the quality and efficiency of the work they do and their professionalism as a whole through providing infrastructure and equipment along with leadership training.

Setup the Multimedia Room

Project Number NF/PG/2021/0003 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Noolaham Foundation
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations SriLanka Project Period 2022
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project was designed with the objective of It is essential to establish a dedicated space in the Noolaham foundation for the multimedia documentation of the noolaham foundation. Accompanying documentation of multimedia documents and key activities. Documenting documents in the knowledge base is also seen as important and directory-centric in achieving functional diversity and creativity in line with the Noolaham foundation's policies. In this context, it is important that the documentation activities of the noolaham Foundation takes place in all parts of Sri Lanka. This exclusive multimedia documentation room will help with many of the noolaham Foundation's projects. For example, it will be easier to perform various activities such as audio recordings, oral histories, interviews.

2020

Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2020

Project Number NF/PG/2020/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Rathina Iyer Pathmanaba Iyer
Project Mentor Rathina Iyer Pathmanaba Iyer Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This is an annual project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation. Under this project, documents lent and gifted to Noolaham by writers and collectors of documents, documents gathered via the various projects conducted by Noolaham, documents that were left out during previous projects conducted by Noolaham and documents that need to be added to the existing collections and multimedia documents are documented. In 2020, 13, 000 documents were uploaded on the websites of Noolaham and Avanaham.

Audio Books Project 2020

Project Number NF/PG/2020/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Dr. Senthilkumaran, Natkeeran L Kanthan and Subakaran Balasubramaniam Project Owner Natkeeran L Kanthan
Project Mentor Natkeeran L Kanthan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This audio book project has been undertaken with the view to documenting via audio recording knowledge bases that can be accessed by differently abled members of the Tamil speaking communities.

Thodarpakam Cataloguing and Digitization

Project Number NF/PG/2020/0003 Grant Agency / Donors British Library Project Owner Natkeeran L Kanthann
Project Mentor Natkeeran L Kanthan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

When the Swmai Gnanapragasar Memorial Noolaham in Nallur came forward to help Noolaham Foundation to digitize the Manuscripts housed in their library, they also requested Noolaham Foundation to digitize the nearly 20, 000 books kept in their library. This project evolved out of the collaboration between the two institutions. As the first step, Thodarpagam had already catalogued 5000 books under another project. As a continuation of that project, this project was undertaken by Noolaham Foundation. As the first step, the inputs that had already been catalogued were retrieved. This project was designed in such a way to provide training to a librarian in cataloguing and to create a site that would include an online catalogue using the DRUPAL software.

Early Tamil Works

Project Number NF/PG/2020/0004 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Natkeeran L Kanthan
Project Mentor Mayooranathan Ratnavelpillai Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Noolaham Foundation has undertaken an initiative called “Old Documents Related to the Tamil-speaking Communities” in order to catalogue, preserve and provide access to documents about the Tamil speaking communities in Sri Lanka published before 1900. Initiatives such archive.org and hathitrust.org have made available in the public domain publications from Sri Lanka and information about those publications. The Jaffna Protestant Digital Library that Noolaham collaborated with another group provided a catalyst to this initiative.

Marapurimaikalai Thedi - In Search of Heritage Exhibition

Project Number NF/PG/2020/0005 Grant Agency / Donors British Library Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

As part of the documentation component of the initiatives undertaken by Noolaham Foundation, a two-day exhibition under the theme “Maraburimaikalai Thedi” (in search of heritage rights) was held in the Prayer Hall of Jaffna Hindu College on the 22nd and 23rd of February 2020. Siragugal Amaiyam of Jaffna collaborated with Noolaham Foundation in organizing this exhibition. The exhibition provided information about digitizing and preserving Ola manuscripts, hand-written manuscripts and printed documents. Many old and rare documents were kept on display during the exhibition.

Revise and streamlining organizational structure, strategy, policy and process

Project Number NF/GP/2020/0006 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project is undertaken with the objective of bringing about reforms in the institutional structure of Noolaham Foundation and revising its strategies and plans.

Evelyn Ratnam Library Documentation

Project Number NF/GP/2020/0007 Grant Agency / Donors Ayothi Library Service Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2020 July - 2021 August
Stakeholders Evelyn Ratnam Library, Staff of Noolaham Foundation

Evelyn Ratnam Institute for Inter-Cultural Studies is located in Jaffna. It was the late Dr. James D.Ratnam who established this Foundation in memory of Mr. Ratnam's late wife Evelyn Vijayaratne Ratnam. Dr. Ratnam had a collection of books and research papers they had collected through his contacts attached to various universities. Educationists, leading legal figures and businessmen who were researchers always went to him for advice and used his library. Dr. Ratnam later donated a collection of his books to Jaffna College, Vaddukoddai. He also set up a building in Jaffna to store books that can be used for research purposes. This building was named Evelyn Ratnam Library. It is currently under the governance of the Board of Directors of Jaffna College.Noolaham Foundation is committed to digitizing and preserving collections related to Tamil-speaking communities in Sri Lanka. In order to meet this objective, Noolaham Foundation is engaged in collecting documents found in libraries operating among Tamil speaking communities in Sri Lanka and archiving and preserving documents collected by individuals belonging to these communities. As part of a series of archiving initiatives, efforts are being made to gather and preserve documents related to the history, politics, economy, culture, education, literature and art of the Tamil-speaking communities in Sri Lanka found in the Evelyn Ratnam Library.

Vaasihasalai 2020

Project Number NF/GP/2020/0008 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Rathina Iyer Pathmanaba Iyer Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Noolaham has been documenting newspaper and magazines from 2005 to date. As part of this initiative, some of the early newspapers and magazines that emerged from the Tamil-speaking communities in Sri Lanka were documented. As continuation of this initiative, it has become an important activity of Noolaham to document newspapers and magazines that are published today. A special feature of this initiative is that contemporary newspapers and magazines are digitized and made available to the readers within a short period of time from their publication. An objective of this project is to provide the readers the ambience of a library in the virtual space. Among the written documents that have a wider reach among the masses newspapers and magazines are important. They attempt to influence the thinking of the masses. We cannot undervalue the role played by newspapers and magazines in the past in the developments that took place in religious, social, political, economic and international spheres. Newspapers function as primary sources in the writing of history. In light of these roles newspapers have played and continue to play, it is important to collect and preserve them for the benefit of the future generations. This is an important initiative in the area of documentation. The Vaasikasalai Project is important to the historical existence of the Tamil speaking communities. This project can support the creation and preservation of a living culture of newspaper reading.

Open Education Resource 2020

Project Number NF/GP/2020/0009 Grant Agency / Donors Face Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project will be carried out as a continuation of the projects that were undertaken earlier to collect, document, digitize and provide open access to documents that are used for learning and teaching purposes in schools. These earlier projects aimed to support schools and the larger community in their educational pursuits. The documents that were collected, documented, digitized and made open access included documents available in Tamil that had already been made open access in Sri Lanka and other related documents for which permission was obtained. Descriptions of the documents composed in line with the standards followed by Noolaham Foundation were attached to the documents that were made available to the larger public

Setup Upcountry Unit for Noolaham Foundation

Project Number NF/GP/2020/0010 Grant Agency / Donors Universal Printers ,Solidarity for Malayaham and Malayaga Makkal Onriyam Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Upcountry Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Establishing a center of Noolaham Foundation in Malaiyaham to carry out the activities of the Foundation in the region. This Center will facilitate the documentation of the documents associated with Malaiyaham and the important activities that take place in the region.

Upcountry Archive 2020

Project Number NF/GP/2020/0011 Grant Agency / Donors Action Change Things Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Upcountry Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project is undertaken with the aim of documenting, digitizing, preserving and sharing documents and other sources related to the political, economic, social, and cultural histories of the Malaiyaham Tamil community and the lifestyle and value-systems of the people who belong to this community. This project is one among the special projects that focus on digitizing endangered documents, documents that have not been taken care of properly, documents that face negligence and documents and archives that are related to communities and groups on the margins and peripheral locations.

Muslim Archive 2020

Project Number NF/GP/2020/0012 Grant Agency / Donors Albayaan Arabic Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project is undertaken with the aim of documenting, digitizing, preserving and sharing documents and other sources related to the political, economic, social, and cultural histories of the Tamil-speaking Muslim communities in Sri Lanka and the lifestyle of the people who belong to these communities. Under this project, Noolaham Foundation collaborates with the Muslim community in creating an open-access, digitized social archive that will give a central place to documentation in the areas of arts, literature, culture, politics and education.

Nool Theddam Digital Catalogue

Project Number NF/GP/2020/0013 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

migrated from Sri Lanka. Mr. N. Selvarajah, a librarian who was born in Anaikoddai, Jaffna and is residing presently in Luton in the UK, has brought out these catalogues since 2002.Writers from Sri Lanka have brought out thousands of books written in Tamil since the mid part of the nineteenth century. There have been no systematic records about these books so far. The primary objective of this initiative is to address this vacuum and document information pertaining to books published in print form by Sri Lankan writers and writers from the diaspora communities from Sri Lanka. The monographs that have been catalogued under this initiative are not subject to quality control. All the books received have been catalogued into lists of 1000 entries each.Some publications have not been added to this catalogue due to the nature of the medium in which they appeared. Pamphlets, drawings, hand-written documents, audio-visual tapes and CDs have not been included here. The catalogue also excludes anniversary publications, remembrance publications, souvenirs and magazines.However, special issues and stand-alone issues of magazines are included in this collection. In addition, some anniversary publications have been included since their content is significant and rich.

Digitization of Donated Documents 2020

Project Number NF/GP/2020/0014 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Rathina Iyer Pathmanaba Iyer
Project Mentor Rathina Iyer Pathmanaba Iyer Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Under this project, documents that are published from locations where the Sri Lankan Tamil-speaking diaspora communities live are documented and digitized. The documents that are gathered for this project include rare documents that shed light on the religious, social, political, economic and cultural lives of the diaspora communities.

Jaffna Uthayan Newspaper Digitization

Project Number NF/GP/2020/0015 Grant Agency / Donors Parthipan Paramsothy Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Noolaham Foundation has undertaken a project to digitize the Uthayan Newspaper published from Jaffna. This newspaper helps readers become aware of the developments in the political scene in Sri Lanka, the country’s economic affairs, culture and social values.

Regional Documentation - Kilinochchi

Project Number NF/GP/2020/0016 Grant Agency / Donors Kili People Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Kilinochchi Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

As part of creating the Kilinochchi Regional Archive, efforts are being made to document the history of the district, the traditions of the people who live there, their habits and cultural and artistic practices, the social structures and systems that are observed in the district, agriculture and other livelihood activities in which the people of the district engage, and institutions such as schools, places of worship, women’s organizations and community centers that are located in the district, the economic changes and development initiatives that took place in the district, the measures taken in the district toward ecological conservation and the challenges faced by the people of the district during the war.

Jaffna Protestant Digital Archive (EAP 835 & EAP 971)

Project Number NNF/GP/2020/0017 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Thiruvarangan Mahendran
Project Mentor Mayooranathan Ratnavelpillai Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

A set of documents related to the American Ceylon Mission preserved at Jaffna College was digitized as part of a project led by Columbia University in the City of New York with the sponsorship provided by the British Library. Noolaham Foundation collaborated with Columbia University in this project. The objective of the current project is to bring out a compilation of the documents digitized under the project led by Columbia University.

Caste in Sri Lanka

Project Number NF/GP/2020/0018 Grant Agency / Donors Dalit Samuga Mempaddu Munnani Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2020 -2021
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

In Sri Lanka, there are three caste systems among the Sinhalese, Sri Lankan Tamils and Malaiyaha Tamils. This project titled as “Ilankaiyil Saathiyam” (Caste in Sri Lanka) attempts to document, preserve and disseminate documents related to caste among the Tamil-speaking communities in Sri Lanka. Caste-based practices observed among Sri Lankan Tamils, the way caste operates in this society, and the struggles against caste oppression have a long history in Sri Lanka. Resistance to caste-based oppression which in earlier times manifested via open agitations and non-violent and militant struggles that preceded the civil war, now continues in rather latent forms via activities such as construction of temples. Against such background, Noolaham Foundation has undertaken this project with the objective of collecting, documenting and disseminating documents related to caste among Tamil-speaking communities in Sri Lanka. It is expected that this project will be beneficial to initiatives that seek to create awareness in society against casteism, to educational and research projects that revolve around the question of caste and to anti-caste struggles.

It is recommended to collect the documents for the Caste in Sri Lanka project through Regional projects.

Documentation of Documentation process

Project Number NF/GP/2020/0019 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Natkeeran L Kanthan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Noolaham Foundation and Digital Library, Archives, Museum, Memory Institutional Communities are developed Extensive Knowledge, Skills and abilities in various portions. Similarly, Noolaham Foundation Document the Documentary of Noolaham Founation & it's Services. Bring this open access to public Communities also very important. Accordingly, The program aims to document the activities of Noolaham Foundation Including Documentation, Digital Preservation, Digital Library and Research based Subjects. The vision of Document the Noolaham Foundation Related Matters. Documentation of Documentation open access, Institutional knowledge, Preservation activities and Noolaham Foundation Projects.The above documentation is essential for the fulfillment of various purposes such as Community based practices. When documenting Tamil speaking Communities, it is important to document the written records published in Tamil from those communities related to them Noolaham foundation has been carrying out programs. Thus what are the activities of Noolaham Foundation especially Documentation, digital preservation, Digital library related matters Documenting becomes important. According to that, we need to document the knowledge and share is important. It will also easier to describe Library activities by providing the community with such documented records.this type of documentation can also be used to train affiliates of the Noolaham Foundation.

2019

Setup Eastern Unit for Noolaham Foundation

Project Number NF/PG/2019/0008 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Eastern Project Period 2019
Stakeholders Prasad Sockalingam , Sanjayan Selvamanikam and Noolaham Foundation

Documenting creative productions coming from the Eastern region of the island is important to diversify the digitization work done by Noolaham Foundation in line with the Foundation’s objectives. Absorbing the intellectual community based in the East to digitize the documents found in the archives in the region will strengthen Noolaham’s activities. This initiative will help Noolaham de-centralize its tasks. Under this initiative, Noolaham will be able to address some of the difficulties faced by the Jaffna office due to distance between Jaffna and other regions where the activities of Noolaham are carried out.Although efforts were made to expand the activities of Noolaham in the Eastern region, they were not sustained later. In 2016, Noolaham was successful in finding a venue in the Arayampathy Public Library to house its office. However, since in 2017 it became possible for Noolaham to set up a digitization unit at the Eastern University of Sri Lanka, the 2016 initiative was not taken forward. Within a few months, the activities carried out from the unit at the Eastern University were limited to digitization. Later on, when Noolaham started new projects with a focus on documenting villages and documenting vocational arts, we felt the need to establish a regional center in the Easter. Against this background, Noolaham started some initiatives to set up a regional center in Batticaloa.

Digitization and Cataloguing of Sri Lankan Tamil Palm-Leaf Manuscripts ( EAP 1260)

Project Number NF/PG/2019/0007 Grant Agency / Donors British Library Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna and Batticaloa Project Period 2019
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project undertaken with the sponsorship provided by the British Library seeks to identify and digitize Ola Manuscripts and recording oral histories related to those Ola Manuscripts. This project was created as part of Noolaham’s objective of documenting, digitizing and disseminating knowledge bases associated with the Tamil speaking communities.

Vali West PS E-Library Implementation

Project Number NF/PG/2019/0006 Grant Agency / Donors Valiwest PS Project Owner Natkeeran L Kanthan
Project Mentor Natkeeran L Kanthann Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2019
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Valikamam West Pradeshiya Saba has taken steps to implement a digital library project within its main library using its own financial resources and finances received from Asia Foundation. Noolaham Foundation played an important role in preparing the proposal for this project. The Foundation also provides technical advice to the Pradeshiya Saba to implement this project. The activities that are carried out under this project include creating a digital learning platform that will include the activities of the library of the Pradeshiya Saba and collecting, digitizing and uploading knowledge resources that are related to the region.

Digital Infrastructure Setup

Project Number NF/PG/2019/0005 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Natkeeran L Kanthan
Project Mentor Natkeeran L Kanthan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2019
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

In order to upgrade the digitization and security structures of Noolaham Foundation, a Network-attached Storage equipment was installed in its Jaffna office. Through this initiative, sharing of documents via hard disks was reduced. This initiative also made it possible for Noolaham Foundation to administer its documents remotely. This project was carried out by Noolaham’s volunteers in Canada and Jaffna along with the employees of Noolaham. Previously, copying digitized files on a hard disk was followed in saving, assessing and processing digitized files. However, this method was found time-consuming. It was also found difficult to. these files remotely. As a solution to this challenge, installing a network-attached storage device was installed.

Open Educational Resources 2019

Project Number NF/PG/2019/0004 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2019
Stakeholders Sirakugal Amayam and volunteers for Noolaham Foundation

This project was designed with the objective of documenting educational materials published by schools and educational institutions and making them open access to teachers and students. Beneficiaries could download these documents from the internet. In 2019, this project primarily documented educational resources used in schools for purposes of learning and teaching. It was expected that this project would support the educational endeavors of our communities.Resources related to school education remain scattered all over the internet. An objective of this project was to organize and tag these materials and bring them to a common site in line with the documentation standards followed by Noolaham. Furthermore, this project classified the materials on the basis of grades and subjects. The materials documented under this project included curricula issued by the Department of Education, teacher’s guides, model exam papers, past question papers of the examinations conducted by the Department of Examination and marking schemes. The project would also document previous curricula and educational resources associated with those curricula. This project would be beneficial to those who are interested in conducting research in the areas of education, curriculum studies, education history and pedagogies and methods of learning.

Multimedia Documentation of Religious Monuments

Project Number NF/PG/2019/0003 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Batticaloa and Jaffna Project Period 2019
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Noolaham is in the process of compiling a bibliography of documents about and associated with the Tamil speaking communities in Sri Lanka. In its early days, Noolaham was primarily involved in a digital library project. Noolaham later expanded its activities to areas such as documentation and archiving. Our research projects have been designed in such a way that they include research-based documentation and dissemination of knowledge. This project was designed as a pilot project as part of Noolaham’s initiative to document personalities, places and institutions. Important religious institutions based in the Northern and Eastern parts of the country were identified and documented under this project. The main objective of this project was to document religious institutions.

Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2019

Project Number NF/PG/2019/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2019
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This is an annual project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation. Under this project, documents lent and gifted to Noolaham by writers and collectors of documents, documents gathered via the various projects conducted by Noolaham, documents that were left out during previous projects conducted by Noolaham and documents that need to be added to the existing collections and multimedia documents are documented. In 2019, 16, 000 documents were uploaded on the websites of Noolaham and Avanaham.

Women Archive (2019 - 2022)

Project Number NF/PG/2019/0002 Grant Agency / Donors London Tamil Women Organization / Oodaru Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2019 - 2021
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

The long-term objective of this project is to document the voices, stories, lifestyles, contributions, achievements and histories of the Tamil speaking women and the challenges they have faced. The project has the following goals. Identifying documents related to Tamil-speaking women from Sri Lanka, cataloguing them in line with the standards followed by Noolaham, preserving them as digitized entities, obtaining copyright permission for those documents and providing unlimited access to such resources. Documenting topics and areas that have not been covered in written documents as oral histories and life histories on multimedia platforms and providing assistance to such initiatives. Providing support to teaching, learning and research initiatives and activities driven by women with a focus on issues related Sri Lankan Tamil-speaking women. Sharing the obstacles faced, opportunities identified, experiences encountered and lessons learnt during documentation and archiving.

It is recommended to collect the documents for the women archive through Regional projects.

2018

Ariyalai Village Documentation

Project Number NF/PG/2018/0003 Grant Agency / Donors NAriyalai Sangam - Canada and Ariyalai Sangam - Norwayoolaham Foundation Project Owner Natkeeran L Kanthan
Project Mentor Natkeeran L Kanthan Project Locations Ariyalai Jaffna Project Period 2018
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

The project on documenting the village of Ariyalai was identified when the strategic plan of Noolaham was designed. The objective of this project is to gather, preserve and display information pertaining to a village and make it available for educational and research purposes. The information made available under this initiative will also support the cultural development of the region.

Schools of Jaffna Documentation Project 2018

Project Number NF/PG/2018/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2018
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project was conducted in 2019 with the view to documenting textual materials found in the schools in Jaffna as part of Noolaham’s initiative to document institutions associated with the Tamil speaking communities in Sri Lanka. Under this project, annual souvenirs published by the schools, special magazines, minutes of the meetings of alumni associations and special publications issued by the schools were documented. The project was designed in such a way that it could bring out the importance of these documents, help the development of the schools and support those who are engaged in historical research about educational institutions. Rather than focusing on specific schools, all the schools in the districts were contacted for this project. This project laid the foundation for future projects that can take forward the task of documenting schools in broader manner.

Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2018

Project Number NF/PG/2018/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2018
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This is an annual project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation. Under this project, documents lent and gifted to Noolaham by writers and collectors of documents, documents gathered via the various projects conducted by Noolaham, documents that were left out during previous projects conducted by Noolaham and documents that need to be added to the existing collections and multimedia documents are documented. In 2018, 15, 500 documents were uploaded on the websites of Noolaham and Avanaham.

2017

Mahajana College Documentation

Project Number NF/PG/2017/0006 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2017
Stakeholders Mahajana College, Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Documenting Tellipalai Mahajana College In 2013, Noolaham Foundation began to take efforts to record the histories of schools by documenting their publications. In general, schools in Eelam do have a tradition of preserving archives. Information pertaining to schools can be found in the annual reports, principal’s reports, publications by student clubs and alumni, jubilee year publications, etc. Even such publications are not properly preserved in schools. The ones that are preserved are not available to the larger public.This project, in 2013, documented the publications brought out by Royal College, Colombo and Jaffna Hindu College. In 2014, publications issued by Vembady Girls’ High School were documented. As continuation of this initiative, Tellipala Mahajana College is documented.

Digital Preservation at Eastern University (2017 - 2018)

Project Number NF/PG/2017/0005 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Eastern Project Period 2017 -2018
Stakeholders Eastern University and Noolaham Foundation

In diversifying the activities conducted in line with the policies of Noolaham Foundation and in identifying creative objects that come from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds, documenting materials originating from the Eastern Province is important. It is vital to invite the contribution of undergraduates, lecturers, experts and archivists to these initiatives.

Survey and digitisation of individual manuscript collections in Northern Sri Lanka (Endangered Archives Programme 1056)

Project Number NF/PG/2017/0004 Grant Agency / Donors British Archive Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Northern , SriLanka Project Period 2017
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Community Outreach & Dissemination Creating awareness about palm-leaf manuscripts, and the need for preservation, was one of the main aims of this project. Many people have only heard of manuscripts and have never seen them in real life, or even digitally. Thus, we held four community outreach events to engage the public in this project. The original intention of these events was to help identify custodians. Although these events did not help in identifying custodians directly, they helped in building rapport and awareness about the mission of the project. The most successful of these events was the Palm-leaf manuscripts exhibition held toward the end of the project. It was held over a three day period and over 400 people attended the exhibition, including students, custodians, librarians, and researchers. More than fifty people provided written feedback about the event, which was overwhelmingly positive. The event received wide media coverage, including via newspaper, television, radio and online media. As noted above, the palm-leaf manuscript reading workshop was also very successful.

Multimedia Documentation of Traditional Trades and Crafts of Eastern, Northern and Up-Country Sri Lanka (Wikimedia Foundation)

Project Number NF/PG/2017/0003 Grant Agency / Donors Wikimedia Foundation Project Owner Natkeeran L Kanthan
Project Mentor Natkeeran L Kanthan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2017 - 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

Tamil Wikipedia has played a pioneering venue for recording the knowledge base of the Tamil speaking communities and knowledge available in the Tamil language. We have been compiling various details about the Tamil speaking communities. However, there are obstacles to recording some important knowledge systems. These obstacles include lack of supplementary resources, lack of appropriate precedence, lack of internet connectivity and lack of committed users. One of the areas that has not receive adequate attention is traditional professional arts and crafts and knowledge bases associated with such arts and crafts. This project seeks document via multimedia platforms information pertaining to professional arts and crafts in practice in Jaffna, Malaiyaham and Batticaloa.

Center for Oral History Research (2017 - 2022)

Project Number NF/PG/2017/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2017-2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project was undertaken with the objective of introducing the Center for Oral History Research which is involved in multimedia documentation. The project also aimed to record oral histories, disseminating oral histories as a research method, training researchers in the field of oral histories.

Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2017

Project Number NF/PG/2017/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2017 January - 2017 December
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This project is undertaken annually by Noolaham Foundation. Digitizing material donated and lent by writers and those who collect documents, digitizing documents that are gathered under various initiatives, digitizing documents that are absent in the existent digitized collections, and adding multimedia documents are some of the tasks carried out under this project. Under this project 20, 000 documents were uploaded on Noolaham and Avanaham sites in 2017. The Avanaham site was inaugurated on the Thai Pongal day of 2017. The milestones achieved during this year include multimedia documentation initiatives conducted via Avanaham and documenting oral histories.

2016

Sengai Aaliyan Complete Works Digitization

Project Number NF/PG/2016/0007 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2016
Stakeholders Sengai Aaliyan Family , Field Officers of Noolaham Foundation


The project aims to digitize the documents of Kandaiya Gunaratsa, better known as Sengai Azhiyan, a senior figure in Eelam. K. Gunaratsa is one of the senior writers of Eelam. He has written novels, short stories, geographical books, historical studies, compilation endeavors, general knowledge books, journals and publishing. This project was undertaken in 2016 considering the importance of documenting his documents and his collections.

Multimedia Archiving Platform

Project Number NF/PG/2016/0006 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Natkeeran L Kanthan
Project Mentor Natkeeran L Kanthan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2016
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

The online library of Noolaham Foundation has mostly preserved published works. The strategic planning done by Noolaham Foundation in 2011 recognized the importance of documenting multimedia and digital objects. Even as early as 2011, efforts were made to gather, organize, preserve, display multimedia resources. These efforts also focused on creating search facilities for multimedia objects. We recorded our needs via the document Digital Library Software Evaluation Metrics.

Tamil Optical Character Recognition Implementation

Project Number NF/PG/2016/0005 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Natkeeran L Kanthan
Project Mentor Natkeeran L Kanthan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2016
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation


The objective of this initiative is to introduce Noolaham Foundation’s Tamil OCR to its employees and volunteers. The initiative also aims to gather information necessary to implement this project. This document will be useful to the technology team, employees and volunteers. The content of Noolaham is currently in the PDF format.The objective of this initiative is to share documents in HTML format using these and additional tools. The OCR will help users to search and download easily the documents and content they are in need of.

Digitization of Jaffna Tamil Newspapers

Project Number NF/PG/2016/0004 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2016 - 2020
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation


In the early days of Tamil-speaking communities in Eelam, different journals began to emerge as epics of social values. Some of them have already been documented by the Library. Journals are also important in terms of paradigm as the first source of information in writing history. In this context, the collection of daily newspapers is one of the most important documentation efforts for the next generation.

Biographical Dictionary

Project Number NF/PG/2016/0003 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2016
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation


Documenting the activities of important personalities from the Tamil speaking communities in Sri Lanka is important. These personalities include writers, teachers, principals, social workers, religious leaders, artists, researchers and political analysts. A project with the objective of documenting the lives and work of such personalities was undertaken in 2013. Until 2015, the histories of 2700 personalities were recorded. This project has been planned as a sequel to the project commenced in 2013.

Varathar Digitization

Project Number NF/PG/2016/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2016
Stakeholders Varathar Family, Staff of Noolaham Foundation


Shanmugam Varatharasan (1924.07.01 - 2006.12.21), popularly known as Varathar, was a writer hailing from Ponnalai in Jaffna. His father’s name was Shanmugam. His mother’s name was Sinnathangam. He received his education from Ponnalai American Mission Tamil School, Moolai Saivapragasa Vidyalaya and Karainagar Subramaniya Vidyalaya. Starting his writing career at the age of 15 under the pseudonym Varathar, he left his mark in the genres of short story, modern poetry, novella, and in areas such as journalism and publishing. He was called a Renaissance writer in Eelam Literature.

Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2016

Project Number NF/PG/2016/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2016 January – 2016 December
Stakeholders Volunteers of the Noolaham Foundation

Digital Noolaham Development Program is an initiative undertaken by Noolaham annually. This project includes digitization of documents that authors and archivers gift or lend Noolaham, digitization of documents collected as part of various projects undertaken by Noolaham, identifying and digitizing documents that have been left out during previous initiatives and new documents that need to be added to the existing collection and adding multimedia documents collected during the various initiatives undertaken by Noolaham. Under this project 16, 500 documents were uploaded on the Noolaham website in 2015. A remarkable development made in this year is the commencement of collecting documents via fieldwork.

2015

Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2015

Project Number NF/PG/2015/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2015 January – 2015 December
Stakeholders Volunteers of the Noolaham Foundation

Digital Noolaham Development Program is an initiative undertaken by Noolaham annually. This project includes digitization of documents that authors and archivers gift or lend Noolaham, digitization of documents collected as part of various projects undertaken by Noolaham, identifying and digitizing documents that have been left out during previous initiatives and new documents that need to be added to the existing collection and adding multimedia documents collected during the various initiatives undertaken by Noolaham. Under this project 1000 documents were uploaded on the Noolaham website in 2015.

2014

Improvement of e-Learning Facilities and Soft Skills of the Students of Children’s Home

Project Number NF/PG/2014/0008 Grant Agency / Donors Ratnam Foundation, UK,Hindu Board Children Home Project Owner Seran Sivananthamoorthy
Project Mentor Seran Sivananthamoorthy Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2014 April – 2014 December
Stakeholders Various Stakeholders, Volunteers of the Noolaham Foundation

TheImprovement of e-Learning Facilities and Soft Skills of the Students of Children’s Home project is to increase the capacity of 50 school going children in Hindu Board Children Home on their soft skills, general knowledge, and leadership. Other objective of the project is to introduce and help them familiarize to Moodle based interactive virtual learning system and digitize, archive education related document and conducting promotion activities for improving the learning facilities for the children home’s students. Noolaham Foundation implemented this project in collaboration with Hindu Board Children Home (HBCH), Thirunelvely, Jaffna.

During the project period twenty three training sessions were conducted. Each training session lasted for about three hours. Forty six students and six resource persons participated in these training sessions. The training series included the following: personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that characterize relationships with other people. Soft skills complement hard skills which children are required to develop in order to increase their employability in the future. They are related to feelings, emotions, insights and IQ.

Further NF’s virtual learning environment program which is called “Pallikoodam" and digital library (noolaham.org) were introduced. Information Literacy training was provided so that they can search, evaluate, obtain and use study materials and other information sources from Noolaham Digital Library, Epallikoodam and the internet.

Unwritten Laws and its influence on community and Human Rights in Jaffna

Project Number NF/PG/2014/0007 Grant Agency / Donors Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2014 March - 2014 November
Stakeholders Sector experts, various stakeholders, consortiums, children, youths, women, men and Community Based Organizations(CBOs)

The Unwritten Laws and Practices, their influence on the community and Human Rights in Jaffna project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation with the support of Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust in Jaffna. This project aimed to research on the status of Unwritten Laws and practices among the Jaffna community and to identify their influence on Human Rights at present. Other objectives of the project are to create awareness on this topic among the public, to preserve and document project related materials and to make them available to the wider public.

Almost hundred and twenty unwritten laws, practices and trends were identified, and produced as a research paper in the project period. These unwritten Laws and practices were identified through interactive discussions with experts in the field, community based organizations, consortiums, and beneficiaries, video footages, audio recordings, books, flyers, news from local media, and related photos 30audio recordings and videos from interactive discussions were also documented and preserved. The recorded documents were transcribed. Noolaham Foundation also conducted five factual presentation on the status and influence of unwritten Laws and practices on Human Rights in the targeted community. The targeted community gets clear understanding on the matter and provides a conducive environment for self-resilience. The presentations and discussions created a good avenue for self-understanding and positive social dynamics toward international standards.

Further twenty three project-related books were collected and digitized from repositories and various scholars. The research book and all digitized documents are made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s digital library at www.noolaham.org to multiple users through this project. This digitization has increased the breadth of access that was provided. Use of a digital surrogate may decrease the need to use the original – which may be difficult to access. This project collectively promotes peace, reconciliation and human rights by increasing access to this valuable information and provides an opportunity towards the mission of Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust as well.

Documentation and Information Sharing of Community Medicine Resources

Project Number NF/PG/2014/0006 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2014 February - 2014 November
Stakeholders Department of Community & Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Jaffna. (DCM), Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

The Documentation and Information Sharing of Community Medicine Resources Project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation in 2014 to digitize the publications and collections of the Department of Community & Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Jaffna. It was a collection development project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation in collaboration with another organization. Documentation, preservation and dissemination of community related medical books and other publications was the main aim of the project.

Through this project Noolaham Foundation has digitized 326 documents and made them available on its Digital Library (www.noolaham.org). The digitized publications include documents related to disease prevention and control, Siddha Medicine books, handbooks, statistics, annual reports of family health, administration reports, annual surveys, working papers, situation analysis papers, bulletins, monographs, magazines, journals and newsletters. These documents are available for free access and could be downloaded in the user-friendly interface of Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library and most of the knowledge seekers and relevant stakeholders will have easy access to these services.

Noolaham Foundation strongly believes that this project has added substantial reference resources covering healthy lifestyle, health education, disease prevention, injuries management, and first aid. Thus this collection will immensely benefit the communities in the years to come.

Sharing and Documenting Traditional and Religious Norms of Sri Lankan Tamil Communities

Project Number NF/PG/2014/0005 Grant Agency / Donors Norway Tamil Sangam Project Owner Sanjayan Selvamanickam
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo Project Period 2014
Stakeholders Norway Tamil Sangam , Batticaloa Theatre Lab and STA Solidarity Foundation, Sri Lanka

The project of ‘Sharing and Documenting Traditional and Religious Norms of the Sri Lankan Tamil Community’ is a common platform for the integration of Tamil speaking communities from different backgrounds in Sri Lanka. Hence, Noolaham Foundation has identified Koothu (melodrama) as a one of the traditional tools that share some common values. Then Noolaham Foundation and Norway Tamil Sangam, staged ‘Ravanesan Koothu’ in Colombo with the facilitation of Batticaloa Theatre Lab.

The project’s main event ‘Ravanesan Koothu’ was held at the Ramakrishna Mission Hall, Colombo – 06 on 4th January 2014 with more than 800 spectators. The ‘Ravanesan Koothu’ can be viewed as a great honor and a glimpse at our heritage for Tamil speaking communities in Sri Lanka through these treasury performances. The performance was telecasted on Vasantham TV, and a series of special articles were published in the Virakesari weekend edition about ‘Ravanesan Koothu’. This is the first time ‘Ravanesan Koothu’ was telecast on the visual media in Sri Lanka. This online availability of the event will promote the rich heritage of Tamil culture and Tamil language around the world.

Noolaham Foundation believes that this project will develop an exposure for the arts which are being practiced by the Sri Lankan Tamil speaking communities.

Malaiyaham Archive Pilot Project

Project Number NF/PG/2014/0004 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Up-Country Project Period 2013 September - 2014 September
Stakeholders Radhika Thinakaran, Badulla Literary Circle and Up-Country Tamil speaking community, writers and publishers

The Malaiyaham Archive Pilot Project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation during 2013 and 2014 to digitize and preserve the publications of the Malaiyaham Tamil speaking community. It was implemented as a special collection development project of the Noolaham Digital Library. Documentation and digitization of books and publications related to the Malaiyaham Tamil community was an objective of the project as well.

Through this project Noolaham Foundation has digitized 140 documents and made them available on its digital library at www.noolaham.org. The digitized publications include their culture, distinctive history, tradition, political context, religious practices, arts, stories, the schooling system, journals and novels. These documents are available for free access and could be downloaded in the user-friendly interface of Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library and most of the knowledge seekers and relevant stakeholders will have easy access to these services. A web portal named Noolaham:Malaiyaha_Avanakam (நூலகம்: மலையக ஆவணகம்) was also created. This portal will enable effective and speed searches of the required knowledge.

This project was a successful initiative and received special appreciation from Malaiyaham Tamil writers and publishers. When new documents arrive from the Malaiyaham Tamil community, the documents will be digitized by Noolaham Foundation’s Malaiyaham representative in the future. It will be implemented as part of the Noolaham Foundation’s recurrent Collection Development Project.

Sri Lankan Tamil Who is Who: A Pilot Project

Project Number NF/PG/2014/0003 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2013 - 2014
Stakeholders Vidivu Australia Limited, Seran Sivananthamoorthy,

The Sri Lankan Tamil Who is Who Pilot Project was carried out by Noolaham to initiate a biographical reference resource about personalities from the Sri Lankan Tamil communities. Even though a small number of biographical dictionaries and family histories exist, there are no comprehensive biographical reference resources about Sri Lankan Tamils. By starting this initiative Noolaham Foundation expects to fill that information gap.

Entries about 612 personalities were created during the project period. Even though the initial target number of entries was not met, Noolaham Foundation successfully tested various strategies to collect information about people and verifying such information. A Mediawiki platform was created to continue updating the ‘who is who’ entries. As a pilot initiative, this project has paved way to create a vast collection of biographical reference resources.

Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2014

Project Number NF/PG/2014/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2014
Stakeholders Jothilingam, Paruththiyur Bala Vayiravanathan, Jaffna Public Library

The Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2014 project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation in 2014 to strengthen the digital library collection by adding various documents related to the Sri Lankan Tamil speaking communities. Documentation, and preservation and dissemination of these documents were also the objectives of the project. An important advantage of digital conversion is increased accessibility to users. It also increases availability of sources to individuals who may not be traditional patrons of a library, due to geographic location or organizational affiliation.

Through this project NF has digitized 1,278 documents and made them available on its digital library at www.noolaham.org. The documents that are available online from the project, date back to 1969. Many of these documents are out of print and could be the last available copies of the same. Noolaham Foundation will continue to expand and diversify its collections by undertaking further collection development projects as well.

Osai: Jaffna Vembadi Girls' High School Digitization

Project Number NF/PG/2014/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Seran Sivananthamoorthy
Project Mentor Seran Sivananthamoorthy Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2014
Stakeholders Vembadi Girls' High School, Jaffna Vembadi Old Girls' Association (VOGA), Jaffna, Department of Education

The main objective of ‘Osai: Jaffna Vembadi Girls' High School Digitization’ project was collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the published documents of Vembadi Girls' High School, Jaffna and its community members. This collection includes periodical publications from different years (1956 -2014) and materials such as magazines, newsletters, booklets, reports, souvenirs and felicitation, annual publications, leaflets, memorial publications, monographs and educational materials. It was a collaborative project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation with the help of Vembadi Old Girls' Association (VOGA). This project was aimed to provide open access to and to create global visibility for the institution’s publications and to store and preserve institutional digital assets.

During this project, 73 rare documents were digitized and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library (www.noolaham.org) to the Tamil communities of the entire world. This project was a successful initiative and received special appreciation from the school community and other stakeholders. The digitized documents were published on the 25th of May 2014 at an annual programme of Vembadi Old Girls' Association (VOGA) in Jaffna. Noolaham Foundation was honored by VOGA. The documented collections were gifted to the school in the form of DVD and printed hand book so that the school can share this document with their well-wishers, stake holders, and students.

2013

Initiation of Moodle for Sri Lankan Tamil Speaking Students

Project Number NF/PG/2013/0007 Grant Agency / Donors Visions Global Empowerment Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2013 August – 2014 January
Stakeholders Uva Wellassa university Tamil students, Zonal Education Directors and School expertise teachers

Pallikoodam Program of Noolaham Foundation supports the educational needs of the Tamil speaking students using digital technologies. It is an educational initiative of Noolaham Foundation aimed at creating an alternative, community-centered educational system among the Tamil speaking communities in Sri Lanka. The virtual learning environments made possible by emerging Internet based educational technology provides a great cost-effective opportunity to bring and link quality educational resources to students and youth. It helps a student who has access to the Internet to proceed his/her studies anywhere and anytime. Virtual Learning will help those who are in need of self-learning and those want to share their knowledge through the Internet. Therefore, Noolaham Foundation collaborated with Visions Global Empowerment aiming at the initiation of a “Moodle” system and introducing to students communities. Moodle system is an e - learning interface and contains educational resources in an online platform.

Visions Global Empowerment, a non-profit organization which motivates children through education development programs, joins hand through collaborating with this project. Moodle system and active forum are the outcomes of the project. The official virtual learning website for the virtual learning platform powered by the ‘Moodle’ system was launched on 4th of January 2014 at the Noolaham Foundation’s ninth year annual celebrations held at Ramakrishna Mission Hall, Wellawatte, Colombo with more than 800 spectators. The students and beneficiaries can view the portal at www.epallikoodam.org. Noolaham Foundation conducted introductory sessions in 44 centres for 103 schools with approximately 4,000 students’ participation (see annexure I). Also Noolaham Foundation facilitates students with 10,008 number of multiple choice question bank (see annexure II). Tamil Students of the University of Uva Wellassa, University of Moratuwa and volunteers carried out introductory secession in the Northern, Eastern, Central and Uva provinces in Sri Lanka.

Tamil Optical Character Recognition Support Project

Project Number NF/PG/2013/0006 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo and Jaffna Project Period 2013 July – 2013 December
Stakeholders Department of Computer Science, University of Jaffna, Library, University of Jaffna (UOJ)

The Tamil Optical Character Recognition Support Project was aimed at providing scanned raw images of rare Tamil documents and to assist the Tamil OCR development project. Noolaham Foundation collaborated with department of Computer Science, University of Jaffna to implement this project. The Tamil digitization project is a joint venture of the Theekshana (School of Computing, University of Colombo) and the department of Computer Science, University of Jaffna and funded by ICTA. The main goal of the project is to develop the tools needed to automatically recognize the most common printed Tamil fonts from scanned images of books and documents for digitizing such content.

Noolaham Foundation provided scanned images of 51 rare documents to the department of Computer Science, University of Jaffna for training and testing the Tamil OCR system through this project. In the documents documented, 15 books (6,450 raw images) were already available at Noolaham Digital Archive. Another 36 documents were digitized specifically for this project with a view to using them for training and testing the Tamil OCR system which is being developed. All 51 documents are made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library www.noolaham.org. This project was a successful initiative and received special appreciation from the research community.

Republishing of Rare and Endangered documents

Project Number NF/PG/2013/0005 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo and Jaffna Project Period 2013 January - 2013 June
Stakeholders Ezhuna Media Foundation Satkunam Sathiyathevan and Arangaraj Jeganathan

The objectives of the ‘Republishing of Rare and Endangered documents’ project was to publish rare works in collaboration. During this project Noolaham Foundation collaborated with some individuals and Ezhuna Media Foundation and published two books. Ezhuna Media Foundation is a non - profit, charitable, independent media organization. The part of publication expenditure was covered by Mr. Sujan Shanmugasingam, Canada.

During this project two rare documents were published. They are ‘Thamizhpashai’ and ‘Pandaithamilar’. The ‘Thamizhpashai’ is re-edition of Mr. T. T. Saravanmuthupillai and was edited by Mr. Satkunam Sathiyathevan. ‘Pandaithamilar’ is the first edition and the author is Swamy Gnanapragasar. It was edited by Dr. Arangaraj Jeganathan. A digital copy of ‘Thamizhpashai’ is available at Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library (www.noolaham.org) and the digital copy of ‘Pandaithamilar’ book will be made available only in 2016 on Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library due to copyright restrictions. If anyone wants to use the content of the book with less copyright restrictions, they would contact the publishers.

Aaram: Jaffna Hindu College Digitization

Project Number NF/PG/2013/0004 Grant Agency / Donors Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust Project Owner Seran Sivananthamoorthy
Project Mentor Seran Sivananthamoorthy Project Locations Colombo and Jaffna Project Period 2013 January – 2013 October
Stakeholders Jaffna Hindu College, Colombo Old Boys Association of Jaffna Hindu College

‘The Aaram: Jaffna Hindu College Digitization’ project was aimed at collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the published documents of Jaffna Hindu College, Jaffna and its community. This collection includes periodical publications since 1933 and materials such as magazines, newsletters, booklets, reports, souvenirs and felicitation, annual publications, leaflets, memorial publications, monographs and administrative documents. The main objective of this project is to provide open access of institution’s printed collection, preserve and create wide global visibility.

Noolaham foundation has digitized 133 publications from ‘By laws of the Jaffna Hindu College 1933’ released in 1933 to ‘Jaffna Hindu College Sivagnana Vairavar Koyil Kudamuzhukku Vizha Malar’ released in 2013 by the Jaffna Hindu College. Noolaham Foundation obtained great support from the youth wing of Jaffna Hindu College in collecting the publications released by the College. Noolaham Foundation has made required facilities available for readers to view these digitalized publications on its digital library website, www.noolaham.org.

Noolaham Foundation and the Colombo branch of Jaffna Hindu College Old Boys’ Association released all the documented publications as a DVD named ‘Aaram’ along with a handbook titled, ‘Aaram- Inthuvin Aavanak Kalanjiyam’ on 14th October 2013 at Saraswathy Hall, Colombo-04. The documented collections were gifted to school, so that the school can distribute these documents to their well-wishers, stake holders, and students for their use. This digitization project provides an opportunity to preserve these historical documents and share them with a wider community of scholars and students.

Tamil Documentation Conference 2013

Project Number NF/PG/2013/0003 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Noolaham Foundation
Project Mentor Noolaham Foundation Project Locations Colombo, Sri Lanka Project Period 2012 November – 2013 April
Stakeholders Vimalathithan Vimalanathan

Noolaham Foundation has been successfully carrying out the task of sharing knowledge for the benefit of the present and future generations since 2005. Marking the completion of its 8th year, Noolaham Foundation conducted a research Conference on the theme of “Documentation and Preservation in Sri Lankan Tamil Milieu” on the 27th and 28th of April 2013 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Tamil Documentation Conference 2013 was aimed to enhance documenting and preserving the knowledge resources of the heritages of the Tamil speaking communities in Sri Lanka.

Through this project Noolaham Foundation has identified and discussed the past and future of documentation, preservation and dissemination of knowledge. Researchers, educationists and scholars across Sri Lanka and from other countries submitted their research papers on the following sub-themes at this conference: History, archaeological documents related to the heritages of the Tamil speaking communities in Sri Lanka, audio, visual and photographic documents , individual personalities and institutions, documenting society, linguistic and literary documentation, knowledge sharing and education, the role and uses of technology in documentation, digital libraries, websites and databases, cataloguing and library science , art, and cultural memory and documentation.

This conference is unique in the sense that is the first ever conference on documentation in Tamil. Forty eight research articles were presented at eight sessions. The conference proceedings volume is to be released at a later date. This research conference is one of the initiatives taken towards the Tamil communities’ future plan to promote research on documentation and it received special appreciation from scholars and the public.

Vethiyar Thamilavanam: Colombo Royal College Digitization

Project Number NF/PG/2013/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust Project Owner Seran Sivananthamoorthy
Project Mentor Seran Sivananthamoorthy Project Locations Colombo Project Period 2013
Stakeholders Students of Royal College Tamil Debate Council, Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation and Royal College, Colombo

The ‘Vethiyar Thamilavanam: Colombo Royal College Digitization’ project aimed at collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the published documents of Royal College, Colombo and its Tamil community. The main objectives this project was to provide open access of institution’s printed collection, preserve and create wide global visibility of historical documents of Royal College in order to make it much easier for students and others who are interested in learning the college history.

Noolaham foundation has digitized 92 documents and made required facilities for readers to view these digitized publications online at www.noolaham.org and shared offline digital resources in a DVD named ‘Veththiyar Thamizhavanam 2013’ which was released at Royal College Union Skill Centre on 31 March, 2013. Royal College Tamil Debaters’ Council was involved in collecting these publications released by the Tamil societies and Associations of their college.

This collection includes magazines, newsletters, booklets, reports, souvenirs and felicitation publications, annual publications, leaflets and memorial publications published from 1964 to 2012.

Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2013

Project Number NF/PG/2013/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Sri Lanka Project Period 2013
Stakeholders Rajathurai Ganesarajah, A. Jinnah Sherifdeen, N. Tharmarasa, and Local publishers of Sri Lankan Tamil speaking community


With the increased availability of economical digital storage media, high speed scanners and high-bandwidth networks, Digital Libraries have received a boost in the last few years. The dream of digitizing vast areas of knowledge pertaining to mankind, and making them available online has now become a realizable goal. The Noolaham Digital Library Collection Development 2013 project focused on strengthening Noolaham’s Digital Library collection by adding various rare documents to it.

Through this project Noolaham Foundation has digitized 676 documents and made them available on its Digital Library (www.noolaham.org). The documents that are made available online through the project date back to 1970. Most of these documents are out of print and are available at only a few libraries and personal collections.


2012

Manuscripts Archive Jaffna Public Libray 2012

Project Number NF/PG/2012/0007 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Seran Sivananthamoorthy Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2012 September – 2012 December
Stakeholders Jaffna Public Library, Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

The Manuscripts Archive Jaffna Public Library 2012 was carried out by Noolaham Foundation in 2012 to digitize and archive the collection of palm-leaf manuscripts held at Jaffna Public Library. This type of project was the second project carried out by Noolaham Foundation in the same year. To maximize use of palm-leaf manuscripts through online access of the digitized documents and increase the life of the collections are the main objective of the project.

Through this project 5 manuscript volumes were digitized. A web portal also will be created. These precious collections consists of information on Tamil literature, prose and verse, history and tradition, grammar and lexicography, art, indigenous medicine, astrology, science, architecture and folk-lore. These document collections will be made freely accessible and downloadable in the user-friendly interface of Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library and most of the knowledge seekers will have easy access to these services. This project was a successful initiative and received special appreciation from scholars.

Muslim Archive Pilot Project

Project Number NF/PG/2012/0006 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Akkaraipattu, Ampara District Project Period 2012 September - 2013 September
Stakeholders Larisdeen Rajeeb, Mr. Mahroof Fauzer and Mr. M.I.M.Jabeer

The Muslim Archive Pilot Project was the pilot project conducted by Noolaham Foundation to create a special collection called Muslim Archive within the Foundation’s digital library www.noolaham.org. The Muslim Archive collection aims to collect and update a comprehensive information resource pool about the Tamil speaking Muslim communities of Sri Lanka. This project was implemented with the support of various individuals who had documents about Muslim issues in Sri Lanka.

During this project 201 rare and endangered documents were digitized and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library to the Tamil speaking community. A web portal was created for the Muslim Archive special collection where all documents related to the Muslim identity can be located and accessed. This project was a successful initiative and received special appreciation from Sri Lankan Muslim writers and publishers.

Digitizing Publication for Online Access

Project Number NF/PG/2012/0005 Grant Agency / Donors Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust / Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo and Jaffna Project Period 2012 September - 2014 March
Stakeholders Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust

The Digitizing Publications for Online Access project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation in Colombo and Jaffna with the project funding received from Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust in Colombo and Jaffna. The main goal of this project was to identify, locate and digitize various publications and make them available online.

During the project period, Noolaham Foundation has digitized 31,053 pages from 262various kinds of publications and made them available through the digital library at noolaham.org. These publications include works of eminent Tamil and Muslim writers. Also, Noolaham Foundation has obtained written permission from 52 copyright holders to digitize their writings and publications and make them available online. We obtained permission from writers, institutions and schools. The permission obtained from these persons and institutions has enabled Noolaham Foundation to release another 20,000 pages which had been archived but held back from open access because of copyright restrictions. A number of publications digitized through this project enabled us to launch two more projects releasing DVDs of publications of two schools.

Manuscripts Archive Chunnakam Public Library 2012

Project Number NF/PG/2012/0004 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Seran Sivananthamoorthy
Project Mentor Seran Sivananthamoorthy Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2012
Stakeholders Chunnkam Public Library, S. Balamurali

The Manuscripts Archive Chunnakam Public Library 2012 project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation in 2012 to digitize and archive the collection of palm-leaf manuscripts and archaic coins in the Chunnakam Public Library. Digitization of palm leafs and ancient coins is a first-of-its-kind activity undertaken by NF. To archive as electronic document, maximize the usage of palm-leaf manuscripts, provide access to them freely and enhance the study of ancient numismatics through online access of digitized documents, and to understand and depict the history and promote the prestige of the Tamil state are the objectives of the project.

The project was completed by December 2012. Through this project ten manuscript volumes and seventy five ancient coins were digitized and will be launched publicly at www.noolaham.org. A web portal will also be created for easy access and could be downloaded in the user friendly interface. These precious collections are related to the Tamil speaking communities of Sri Lanka. These palm leafs were the storage medium for ancient literature, philosophy and science containing valuable knowledge such as medicine, Tamil literature, stories, paintings, family Notes, family Accounts, grammar books, astrology, septic breakdown remedies, animal remedies, Vegan books and thesaurus. The digital preservation of these manuscripts is one of the more respectable achievements of the project in the context of cultural preservation. This project was a successful initiative and received special appreciation from librarians and scholars.

Digital Library for School Students Pilot Project

Project Number NF/PG/2012/0003 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Jaffna, Trincomalee and Colombo Project Period 2012 - 2013
Stakeholders Department of Education, Northern Province Various Zonal Education offices and School teachers

The Digital Library for School Students Pilot Project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation in 2012/2013 to create open access digital library for the Sri Lankan Tamil speaking students and educators. This project was aimed at digitizing educational materials. It was the first step taken by the Foundation towards establishing virtual learning platforms for the Tamil speaking students in Sri Lanka through its Pallikoodam Program. It is an educational initiative of Noolaham Foundation that aims at creating an alternative, community-centered educational system among the Tamil speaking communities in Sri Lanka.

Through this project 500 G.C.E advanced level and ordinary level exam papers were digitized and made available online at Noolaham Foundation’s Pallikoodam Program website at www.epallikoodam.org. Events were conducted at four schools to introduce the Pallikoodam Program as well as Noolaham Digital Library. The Education Department of Northern Province, four zonal Education departments and 11 schools contributed towards this project. This initiative was a massive success and special appreciation came from school teachers and students.

Manuscripts Archive Pilot Project 2012

Project Number NF/PG/2012/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Seran Sivananthamoorthy
Project Mentor Seran Sivananthamoorthy Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2012
Stakeholders Seran Sivananthamoorthy, Federal Assistance Award, French institute of Pondicherry, EAP 458 Team

The Manuscripts Archive Pilot Project 2012 was carried out by Noolaham Foundation in 2012 to establish the Manuscripts Archive Program of the Foundation. While conducting Documentation and Archiving of Rare Endangered Documents project, Noolaham Foundation came across a number of palm-leaf manuscript collections in Jaffna. The flatbed scanners which were being used at that time were not suitable to scan such fragile documents. Thus a pilot project was implemented to evaluate feasibility, time, cost, adverse events, and effect size (statistical variability) of digitizing manuscripts and to establish a Manuscripts Archive Program.

Noolaham Foundation acquired the expertise and received training from EAP 458 team based at the French institute of Pondicherry, India. EAP 458 Team was carrying out a project under the British Library’s Endangered Archive Program. A small sample of ola leaf volumes were also digitized during the project. This project was a successful initiative and received special appreciation from scholars.

Documentation and Archiving of Rare Endangered Documents

Project Number NF/PG/2012/0001 Grant Agency / Donors US Department of State Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo and Jaffna Project Period 2012 - 2013
Stakeholders Staff and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

The main goal of the Documentation and Archiving of Rare Endangered Documents Project was to document and digitize rare and endangered documents related to the Tamil speaking communities of Sri Lanka. Two workshops were conducted to introduce the importance of documentation and archiving and to provide digitizing training; moreover, sustaining a volunteer pool to carry out future activities was also planned as part of this project. It was funded by the US Department of State

Through this project 660 rare and endangered documents were digitized and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library (www.noolaham.org) to the Tamil speaking communities of the entire world. Further, two workshops were conducted by Noolaham Foundation about the importance of documentation and archiving. The project also provided digitizing training to volunteers and other stakeholders as well. During the project period a sustainable volunteer pool was built to carry out future projects. Noolaham Foundation is happy to report that all project goals had been achieved and more projects have been initiated.

Digital libraries are significant as they lower the bar for participation by information producers and collectors. It democratizes the generation and distribution of information. Thus this project supported by US Embassy has enabled Noolaham Foundation to preserve and revitalize culture and knowledge. In a long term perspective, the outcomes of this project will contribute immensely towards fostering knowledge-based development in Sri Lanka.

2011

Digital Documentation Discussion Series 2011

Project Number NF/PG/2011/0006 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Seran Sivananthamoorthy
Project Mentor Seran Sivananthamoorthy Project Locations Colombo and Jaffna Project Period 2011
Stakeholders Colombo Tamil Sangam, Students of Computer Science and Engineering society of the University of Moratuwa

In 2011, Noolaham Foundation successfully conducted five presentations and workshops with volunteers on under the initiative of ‘Digital Documentation Discussion Series 2011’. These events were held from April 2011 to October 2011. These discussions were conducted in collaboratation with the Computer Science and Engineering Society of the University of Moratuwa. They were facilitated by key scholars and activists from the Tamil speaking communities in Sri Lanka as resource persons. The events named Eedu (ஏடு) and Panaiyoolai (பனையோலை) and targeted at creating awareness about digital opportunities, preservation and about the Foundation’s activities.

More than 150 participations and nearly 15 key persons participated and were benefited by this project. Puthiya Noolaham newsletter was introduced and distributed during these events. Furthermore, a video presentation "Kadanthu Vantha Paathai" created by volunteers was presented at the final seminar held on the 02nd of October 2011. It was a valuable documentary about the Foundation’s overall activities.

Digitization Workshops for Library Science Students

Project Number NF/PG/2011/0005 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2010 - 2011
Stakeholders Chinthanaik Koodam, Jaffna

The Digitization Workshops for Library Science Students was carried out by Noolaham Foundation during late 2010 and early 2011 to strengthen operational infrastructure within the Noolaham Foundation’s network and to train Library Science students and Noolaham Foundation’s volunteers in digitization methods and digital preservation.

In 2010 and 2011, Noolaham Foundation conducted two digitization workshops for five days with library science students under the title of ‘Digitization Workshops for Library Science Students’. These workshops were held from December 2010 to October 2011 at Vannarpannai, Jaffna. These workshops were collaborated with Library Science Students, ChinthanaikKoodam, Jaffna and Center for Women, Jaffna. These workshops were facilitated by Ms. A. Valarmathy, program coordinator of Noolaham Foundation. AlsoProf. Samuel Ratnajeevan Herbert Hoole and Prof R. Sivachandarn shared keynotes during the workshops. Approximately 50 Library Science students and volunteers participated in the workshops and were benefited by this project.

Digitization Project hosted by Jaffna Public Library 2011-2012

Project Number NF/PG/2011/0004 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Seran Sivananthamoorthy
Project Mentor Seran Sivananthamoorthy Project Locations Colombo and Jaffna Project Period 2011 - 2012
Stakeholders Jaffna Public Library (JPL)

The Digitization Project hosted by Jaffna Public Library 2011-2012 was carried out by Noolaham Foundation during the years 2011 and 2012. The objectives of this project were to document and archive the collections related to the Tamil speaking communities held by the Jaffna Public Library. It was a collaborative project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation and the Jaffna Public Library. This project enhanced access to information sources as a vast and diverse range of printed publications were digitized and made available online. The digital copies of publications that came out before 1981 were handed over to the Jaffna Public Library.

Through this project 1840 documents were digitized and most of them were made available on Noolaham Foundation’s digital library at www.noolaham.org. It was a significant achievement by Noolaham Foundation as these collections consist of texts on Philosophy and Psychology, Computing and Information Technology, Religion ,Social Sciences such as Sociology, Casteism, Feminism, Politics, Economics, Marxism, Law, Child care, Education, Business, Culture, folklore and Sex, Language and Linguistics such as lexicography, Tamil grammar, Sinhala Language and so on, Science and logic, Indigenous Medicine, Astrology, Agriculture and Cooking, Arts, Sculpture, Music, Cinema, Literature, Literary history, Poems, Prose and Verse, Short Stories, Jokes, Novel, Drama, Children's Literature and history.Most of the documents digitized were made available online for free access and could be downloaded from the user-friendly interface of Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library. This project was a successful initiative and received special appreciation from scholars and the library circles.

Digitization and Dissemination of Contemporary Tamil Newspapers

Project Number NF/PG/2011/0003 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo and Jaffna Project Period 2011 - 2013
Stakeholders Local Newspaper publishers

The Digitization and Dissemination of Contemporary Tamil Newspapers project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation during the period between 2011 and2013 to digitize the current and past issues of contemporary newspapers that have readership among the Tamil speaking communities of Sri Lanka. It was a collaborative project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation in coordination with various publishers. The project aimed at preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the print, published documents. The main objectives this project were to provide open access of contemporary and past issues of newspapers, preserve and create wide global visibility of the information they carried.

Totally 372 issues of contemporary newspapers under 14 titles were digitized through this project and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library at www.noolaham.org.Table of contents were manually inputted to enhance the search ability of the content. A web portal was also created at the digital library so that users could identify and access the issues easily and could download them in the user friendly interface.

Digitization and Dissemination of Contemporary Magazines

Project Number NF/PG/2011/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo and Jaffna Project Period 2011 -2013
Stakeholders Local Newspaper and Magazine publishers

The Digitization and Dissemination of Contemporary Tamil Magazines Project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation during 2011-2013 to digitize and display the current and past issues of contemporary magazines related to the Tamil speaking communities of Sri Lanka. It was a project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation in collaboration with various publishers. The main objectives of this project was to provide open access of contemporary and past issues of magazines, preserve and create wide global visibility of these packed valuable information.

This project was successful in collecting 59 titles of contemporary periodicals and making them available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library at www.noolaham.org. As Tamil OCR is not available, Table of contents was manually inputted to enhance the search-ability of the content. A web portal (annexure 1) was also created at the digital library so that users could identify and access the issues easily and download in the user friendly interface. This collection of materials is not available elsewhere and is of both historical as well as scholarly value.

Organizational Datasets Pilot Project

Project Number NF/PG/2011/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Up-Country Project Period 2011 - 2012
Stakeholders Various organizations

The Organizational Datasets Pilot Project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation in 2011/12 to locate resources about organizations and websites related to Sri Lankan Tamil communities. The scope of the project was to identify and index the information about Sri Lankan Tamil speaking community based organizations, links to other related datasets and websites, and to make all entries available online without any access restrictions under a Creative Commons license.

Through this pilot project, details about 2987 organizations and websites were gathered, and indexed. The information was collected from many organizations such as Tamil Libraries, Educational Institutions, Publishers, Places of Worship, and other Institutions like political parties, Community Based Organizations (CBOs), NGOs, and Websites. A web portal named Noolaham: Tharavuthalangal (நூலகம்: தரவுத்தளங்கள்) was also created at Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library at www.noolaham.org. This portal will enable effective and speed searches of the required information.

2010

International Center for Ethnic Studies Digitization

Project Number NF/PG/2010/0005 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo Project Period 2010
Stakeholders International Center for Ethnic Studies Ponnudurai Thambirajah – Chief Librarian ICES

The International Center for Ethnic Studies Digitization Project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation and International Center for Ethnic Studies (ICES), Colombo in 2010 to digitize the publications of the ICES. It was a collaborative project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation collective with another organization.

Through this project 137 documents were digitized and were made them available on Noolaham Foundation’s digital library at www.noolaham.org. The digitized publications include books, research papers, working papers, lectures handouts, monographs, reports, magazines, periodical newsletters and journals. This project increased online information sources on civil society, human rights, post war and land issues, history of conflict, capacity-buildings, current socio – political and economical configuration and contributed towards the mission of International Center for Ethnic Studies as well.

Thinamurasu Digitization Project

Project Number NF/PG/2010/0004 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo Project Period 2010
Stakeholders Thinamurasu Publishers

The Thinamurasu Digitization Project was a collaborative project carried out by Noolaham Foundation and Thinamurasu Publishers to digitize the weekly issues of Thinamurasu newspaper. Thinamurasu, a weekly newspaper of Eealam Peoples Democratic Party, is published from Colombo and issued all over Sri Lanka. It contains news articles such as political commentaries, narratives about national events, as well as issues of local and regional importance, family notices such as family’s birthday announcements and obituary notices and congratulatory messages, letters such as letters to the editor written by the newspaper’s readers including and letters focusing on contemporary debates, aspirations and anxieties, information on the lives of notable individuals and ancestors, photographs, graphics, maps and editorial cartoons.

A total of 661 Thinamurasu issues dating from 1993 to 2007 were digitized through this project and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library www.noolaham.org. A web portal was also created at the digital library so that the users can access information about the magazines and read the issues easily.

Sarinihar Digitization Project

Project Number NF/PG/2010/0003 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo Project Period 2010
Stakeholders Sarinihar publishers

The Sarinihar Digitization Project was a collaborative project carried out by Noolaham Foundation and Sarinihar Publishers to digitize the past issues of Sarinihar newspaper and magazines in 2010. This was implemented as a collaborative project between the publishers and Noolaham Foundation in 2010. Sarinihar focused sharply on issues related to the Sri Lankan Tamil speaking communities and the civil war. Sarinihar newspaper contains news articles such as political commentaries, political poetry and stories as well as essays and reports on issues of local and regional importance including issues such as feminism and caste discrimination, illuminating contemporary debates about the Sri Lankan Tamils’ liberation war, the effects of the civil war, Sri Lankans’ aspirations and anxieties in the war period. The newspaper also disseminated a lot of information on the lives of notable individuals and ancestors. It included photographs, graphics and editorial cartoons. Sarinihar publications could be considered as historical documents about the scars created by the war in Sri Lanka. It covered the major political developments that the island witnessed from the 1990s onwards.

A total of 214 Sarinihar issues dating from 11.06.1990 to 18.2.2001and four Sarinihar magazines were digitized through this project and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library www.noolaham.org.Table of contents were manually inputted to enhance the searchability of the content. A web portal was also created at the digital library so that users could access information about the magazines and read the issues easily.

Puthiya Poomi Digitization Project

Project Number NF/PG/2010/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo Project Period 2010
Stakeholders Puthiya Poomi Publishers


The Puthiya Poomi Digitization Project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation and Puthiya Poomi publications in 2010 to digitize the publications of the Puthiya Poomi monthly newspaper. It was a project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation in collaboration with another organization. The main objectives this project was to provide the public open access to the Puthiya Poomi publications, preserve and create wide global visibility of historical documents.

The Puthiya Poomi is a political monthly newspaper published by I. Thampiya from Colombo. It typically contains news articles and feature articles on national and international issues as well as local news. The news included is related to vulnerable people, current national and internal political explorers, struggles of the people against imperialism, proletarian activities, social and left wing political concepts about communists’ life over two decades. Totally 114 Puthiya Poomi monthly issues were digitized through this project and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library at www.noolaham.org.

Digitization and Dissemination of Contemporary Tamil Newspapers Pilot Project

Project Number NF/PG/2010/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo, Jaffna and Eastern Sri Lanka Project Period 2010
Stakeholders Santhirasegaramoorthy Ramanan

The Digitization and Dissemination of Contemporary Tamil Newspapers Pilot Project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation in 2010 to digitize the current issues of contemporary newspapers. It was a collaborative project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation in coordination with various publishers. The project aimed at collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of printed newspapers. The main objectives this project were to provide open access of contemporary newspapers, preserve and create wide global visibility of the valuable information in these papers. The project was implemented as a pilot project to evaluate feasibility, time, cost, adverse events, and effect size (statistical variability) prior to a full-scale project.

Totally 246 valuable contemporary newspapers under four titles were digitized through this project and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library at www.noolaham.org. These collections included 165 issues of Thinakkathir, 42 issues of Thisai, 10 issues of Nihari and 29 issues of Aathavan newspaper; the last two were published by Ravaya publishers, Colombo. These publications analyze social, political, cultural and judicial issues related to Sri Lanka. A web portal was also created so that all contemporary magazines can be accessed easily.

2009

Tamil Times Digitization Project

Project Number NF/PG/2009/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo and Jaffna Project Period 2009
Stakeholders Tamil Times Publishers, UK.

The Tamil Times Digitization Project was carried out in 2009 to digitize all issues of the Tamil Times magazine. Tamil Times (ISSN 0266 4488) is an English monthly news magazine that covered on Sri Lankan Tamil issues. It was published in London UK continuously from 1981 to the late 2000s. It provides valuable documentation and analysis of the Tamil struggle and Sri Lankan and International politics during this crucial period.

Through this project which was carried out with the support of the publishers of Tamil Times, all 297 issues of Tamil Times were digitized and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s digital library at www.noolaham.org. A web portal was also created at the digital library so that the users can access information about the magazines and read the issues easily.

Digitization Project hosted by Colombo Tamil Sangam Library

Project Number NF/PG/2009/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo Project Period 2008 - 2009 February
Stakeholders Kandiah Nagenthirapillai, Theepan Thevathasan, Sivaramakrishna Sarma, Rathina Iyer Pathmanaba Iyer

The Colombo Tamil Sangam contributes towards the betterment of the Tamil language, culture and arts. It was established in 1942. It operates a library with more than 45,000 books and magazines. A special purpose reference section aiming to preserve Sri Lankan Tamil related documents is functioning as part of that library. The goals of the Digitization Project hosted by the Colombo Tamil Sangam Library Project were to document and archive the Sri Lankan collection of the Colombo Tamil Sangam Library.

Totally 2,950 valuable books and magazines were digitized through this project and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library www.noolaham.org.

2008

Digitization Project in Trincomalee

Project Number NF/PG/2008/0005 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Mauran Muralitharan
Project Mentor Mauran Muralitharan Project Locations Trincomalee and Colombo Project Period 2008
Stakeholders Vilvarajah Prashanthan, Sargunam Sathiyathevan, SDRO

The Digitization Project in Trincomalee was conducted by Noolaham Foundation during 2008 in Colombo and Trincomalee. It was implemented as a volunteer driven project to digitize a collection of print publications which were donated to Noolaham Foundation at Trincomalee by various well-wishers.

Through this project 102 books and magazines were digitized and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library atwww.noolaham.org. This collection of documents was gathered through NF’s volunteers. After digitization, those publications were either returned to the contributors or donated to libraries. This project was a successful initiative and received special appreciation from Tamil writers and publishers of Trincomalee.

Digitization and Display of Monographs 2008-2009

Project Number NF/PG/2008/0004 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo and Jaffna Project Period 2008 May - 2009 April
Stakeholders Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

The Digitization and Display of Monographs 2008-2009 was conducted by Noolaham Foundation during 2008/09 in Colombo. The objective of the project was to digitize and display a series of books on the Noolaham Digital Library’s home page. It was part of Noolaham’s communication strategy of that period.

The project was implemented in two phases. During the first phase, a book was displayed each day for four months (May to August 2008) and during the second phase, a new book was displayed each week (September 2008 - April 2009). Through this project 155 various kinds of documents were digitized and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library at www.noolaham.org. After the digitization, those publications were either returned to the contributors or donated to libraries. This project was a successful initiative in introducing Noolaham digital library to users from diverse backgrounds.

Gnanam Digitization Project

Project Number NF/PG/2008/0003 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo Project Period 2008
Stakeholders Gnanam Publishers

The Gnanam Digitization Project is a collaborative project between Gnanam Publishers and Noolaham Foundation as part of Noolaham Foundation’s long term efforts to develop digital resources of contemporary magazines and make them freely accessible. This project extends the usefulness of the Tamils bibliographic and digitized assets by increasing access to this valuable information and provides an opportunity for institutions to select and contribute digitized information resources.

The first issue of Gnanam Magazine was published in June 2000 and it is published monthly. Gnanam issues contain poetry, creative essays, short stories, fiction, and political blogs and columns, as well as news about contemporary literary events and readers’ opinions. This magazine gives space to young innovative writers and their thoughts. Also Gnanam publishers brought out some collections of work by Sri Lankan writers. They have also been digitized by NF during this project.

Totally 91 monthly issues and 6 books were digitized through this project and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library at www.noolaham.org. NF has created a special web portal to increase search ability. The magazines and books digitized date back to the 2000s. Noolaham Foundation has established plans to collect and digitize the future issues on a regular basis.

Digitization and Dissemination of Contemporary Magazines Pilot Project

Project Number NF/PG/2008/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo and Jaffna Project Period 2008
Stakeholders Local Magazine publishers

Digitization and Dissemination of Contemporary Magazines Pilot Project The Digitization and Dissemination of Contemporary Magazines Pilot Project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation in 2008 to digitize the current issues of contemporary Tamil magazines that focus on Sri Lankan Tamil speaking communities. It was a collaborative project undertaken by Noolaham Foundation in coordination with various publishers. The project aimed at collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of printed magazines. The main objectives this project were to provide open access of contemporary magazines, preserve and create wide global visibility of the valuable information in these magazines. The project was implemented as a pilot project to evaluate feasibility, time, cost, adverse events, and effect size (statistical variability) prior to a full-scale project.

This project was successful in digitizing76 issues of 13 titles of periodicals. All of them are available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library at www.noolaham.org. The table of contents was manually inputted to enhance the search-ability of the content. The digitized magazine was also categorized at the digital library so that users could identify and access the issues easily.

Digitization Project in Colombo 2008-2009

Project Number NF/PG/2008/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo Project Period 2008 - 2009 February
Stakeholders Kandiah Nagenthirapillai, Theepan Thevathasan, Sivaramakrishna Sarma, Rathina Iyer Pathmanaba Iyer

The Digitization Project in Colombo 2008-2009 was conducted by Noolaham Foundation during 2008 and early 2009 in Colombo. The objective of the project was to digitize a collection of print publications donated or loaned to Noolaham Foundation for digitization. Thus documents collected in Colombo and diasporic magazines sent by Pathmanaba Iyer were digitized through this project.

This project was implemented from January 2008 and to February 2009. Through this project 148 books and magazines, and 176 diaspora magazines were digitized in 2008 and another 245 documents were digitized in 2009. All 569 documents were made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library at www.noolaham.org. This project was a successful initiative and it received special appreciation from many Tamil writers and publishers.

2007

Digital Library CMS Project 2007

Project Number NF/PG/2007/0004 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Mauran Muralitharan Project Locations Colombo Project Period 2007
Stakeholders Mauran Muralitharan, volunteers of Noolaham

The Digital Library CMS Project 2007 was carried out by Noolaham Foundation to create an easily accessible Content Management System to host the Noolaham Digital Library. Prior to this project, Noolaham website was created by simple html links. MS Frontage html editor was used for this purpose. This site was inadequate to search the content. Even browsing as all the information had to be inputted manually.

During this project, initially Joomla CMS was installed and around 100 pages were created. But the testing was unsuccessful as the contributors struggled to understand the CMS. Thus Mediawiki software was tested and it was quite successful. The Tamil Wikipedia approach was used as a number of volunteers contributed towards the project.

Womens' Education and Research Centre Digitization Project

Project Number NF/PG/2007/0003 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo Project Period 2007 - 2008
Stakeholders Dr. Selvi Thiruchandran, Mr. Mahesh Vairamuthu and Women's Education and Research Center (WERC) and Volunteers of Noolaham Foundation

This Women’s' Education and Research Centre Digitization Project was carried out by Noolaham Foundation and Women's Education and Research Center (WERC) in 2007 to digitize the publications of the WERC. It was the first collaborative project undertaken by Project Noolaham collective with another organization.

A total of 140 documents were digitized through this project and 132 of them were made available online through Noolaham digital library at www.noolaham.org. About 100 of the digitized publications were the publications of Women’s Education and Research Centre including books, magazines, newsletters and journals. This project increased the number of Tamil publications related to Women’s issues in Sri Lanka online, and thus contributed towards the mission of the Women’s' Education and Research Centre as well.

Digitization Project in Colombo 2007

Project Number NF/PG/2007/0002 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
Project Mentor Shaseevan Ganeshananthan Project Locations Colombo Project Period 2007 February – 2007 December
Stakeholders Ganeshananthan Vajeeven, Thillainathan Kopinath, Thelivathai Josheph, Balasubramaniam Sivakumar, G. T. Ketharanathan, Sabanayagam Thillakan, Sivaraj, Sivagnanam Jeyashankar, Balasubramaniam Thuvaragan, Sellavel Lambotharan

The Digitization Project in Colombo 2007 was carried out by Noolaham Foundation during 2007 to increase the publications stored in Noolaham Digital Library. This project was an innovative implementation that used donated funds as well as volunteer resources to increase the efficiency of digitization initiatives. An incentive was provided to the volunteers to finish the project within the given timeframe.

A total of 1,117 documents were digitized through this project and 1,074 of them were made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library www.noolaham.org. This project significantly increased the Noolaham Digital Library collection and enabled us to get a wider recognition among Tamil internet users and get more support and resources towards Noolaham Foundation.

Text Digitization Project in Colombo 2007

Project Number NF/PG/2007/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Noolaham Foundation Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Colombo Project Period 2007
Stakeholders Vettivel Jasikan, Rathina Iyer Pathmanaba Iyer, Thambiah Thevathas

The Text Digitization Project in Colombo 2007 was a digitization project which was initiated to convert physical books into machine readable formats. It was one of the first funded projects carried out by Noolaham Foundation. Prior such funded projects, most digitization tasks were done by volunteers and they did not progress quickly. Some volunteers who were participating in the activities of Noolaham Foundation proposed that they would like to make monetary contributions and a project should be coordinated to digitize books, as they would not find time, expertise and resources to type the books manually. Thus the funded projects were started.

A total of 44 books were digitized through this project and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library www.noolaham.org. This project was a successful initiative and received special appreciation from Sri Lankan Tamil writers and publishers.

2006

Text Digitization Project in Jaffna 2006

Project Number NF/PG/2006/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Raththina Iyer Pathmanabha Iyer Project Owner Srikanthaluxmy Arulanantham
Project Mentor Srikanthaluxmy Arulanantham Project Locations Jaffna Project Period 2006
Stakeholders Srikanthaluxmy Arulanantham

Modeled on the Project Gutenberg approach, the Project Noolaham was started in 2005 with a view to creating a fully volunteer contributed online e-book library for the Tamil speaking communities. The Text Digitization Project in Jaffna 2006 was the first funded project initiated by Noolaham Foundation.

A total of 81 books were digitized through this project and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library: www.noolaham.org. This project was a successful initiative and received special appreciation from Sri Lankan Tamil writers and publishers.

2005

Marumalarchi Digitization Project 2005-2008

Project Number NF/PG/2005/0001 Grant Agency / Donors Kopinath Thillainathan Project Owner Kopinath Thillainathan
Project Mentor Kopinath Thillainathan Project Locations Colombo and Jaffna Project Period 2005 - 2008
Stakeholders Sinthuja Kopinath

Marumalarchi Digitization Project was one of the pioneer and earlier digitization initiatives which contributed towards Project Noolaham which evolved into Noolaham Foundation. Modeled on the Project Gutenberg approach, the Project Noolaham was started in 2005 of with a view to creating a fully volunteer contributed online e-book library for the Tamil speaking communities. The Marumalarchi Digitization Project initiative was started in 2004 and ran all the way to 2008. At the beginning of this project, the documents were typed. Adding e-books during the early part of his project was quite slow, due to time constrains. Later scanning was introduced through this Project and it became the accepted digitization method at Noolaham Foundation.

A total of 219 (55 books typed and 164 books scanned) books were digitized through this project and made available online through Noolaham Foundation’s Digital Library www.noolaham.org. This project was a successful initiative and received special appreciation from Sri Lankan Tamil writers and publishers.

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