All Projects/Year/2013

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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.


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