Omshivaprakash H L

Digital Archivist · Co-founder, Servants of Knowledge · Founder, Sanchaya & Sanchi Foundation

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Biography

Omshivaprakash H L is a Bengaluru-based technologist, digital archivist, and open-knowledge advocate widely regarded as the person most responsible for the systematic digitisation of Kannada-language literature and cultural heritage in the twenty-first century. A proud Kannadiga educated in the Kannada medium, he has spent two decades working at the intersection of free software, linguistic technology, and archival practice — first as a blogger and community organiser, then as the architect of several of the most important Kannada digital-library initiatives in existence. He is a long-standing volunteer on Kannada Wikipedia (where he serves as a sysop, or administrator), a Mozillan, and a contributor to free and open-source software. Beyond the archive world, he is also the CEO and founder of Techfiz Inc., an IT firm, and a community member of the Tamarind Valley Collective in Bengaluru. Among scholars of the Kannada language, he has a reputation that is difficult to overstate: as the Kannada literary scholar O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy has put it, if anyone wants to read a Kannada book published fifty years ago or more, there is no other person in Karnataka who can give them access.

Early Career and the Free Software Movement

In 2006, Omshivaprakash — then a technology professional working in Bengaluru — became deeply engaged with the global free software movement. Educated in Kannada, he was struck by the near-total absence of Kannada-language resources about free and open-source software, and decided to do something about it. He began blogging in Kannada about GNU/Linux and open-source development, naming his blog Linuxaayana (a play on the Ramayana, meaning something like "the journey of Linux"). The blog attracted like-minded technologists who shared his passion for both Kannada and free software. Over the following years, this loose network coalesced into Sanchaya, a technology collective dedicated to the use of open-source tools in Kannada linguistic and literary research. The group's first publication, an e-book titled Arivina Alegalu ("Waves of Knowledge"), explained how to adopt free and open-source software and was released under a Creative Commons licence — an early signal of the open-access philosophy that would define all of Omshivaprakash's subsequent work. He has also authored a Kannada-language book on Creative Commons licensing, titled Creative Commons Kannada 101.

Role with Servants of Knowledge

Omshivaprakash is the co-founder and India operations lead of Servants of Knowledge (SoK), the Bengaluru-based open digitisation initiative funded by the US non-profit Public Resource and closely partnered with the Internet Archive. His involvement grew directly from his frustration at not being able to find Kannada-language references while writing Wikipedia articles around 2019. Around that time he learned that Carl Malamud of Public Resource was already archiving Indian public-domain books — buying them from second-hand bookstores and shipping them to the United States for scanning. Omshivaprakash proposed a different model: a community-based operation right in Bengaluru, drawing in volunteers at weekends to scan books held locally. Malamud immediately understood the power of this approach, and together they built the initiative into what it is today. Critically, Omshivaprakash also reengineered the scanning hardware itself: working from the open-source design of the Internet Archive's Table Top Scribe, his team redesigned the V-cradle scanner and had it manufactured in India at a fraction of the original cost, greatly increasing the initiative's ability to scale. He manages all scanning operations in India — overseeing the five-scanner station at Gandhi Bhavan, the digitisation of the entire National Law School of India University library, and ongoing projects at Azim Premji University, Hampi Kannada University, Lalbagh's Department of Horticulture library, the Roja Muthiah Research Library in Chennai, the Ramakrishna Ashram, and many others. By 2024, the team was scanning approximately 1.4 million pages per month across Bengaluru and beyond, and the SoK collection had passed one lakh (100,000) digitised books and titles, with around 50 crore (500 million) views.

Projects

Sanchaya

Founded c. 2010

A non-commercial technology collective exploring the use of free software in Kannada linguistic and literary research. Hosts Vachana Sanchaya (11th-century verse corpus), Pustaka Sanchaya (11,200+ Kannada books), and tools for Kannada natural language processing.

sanchaya.org

Vachana Sanchaya

2013–present

An open research platform for Vachana Sahitya — the 11th–12th century Lingayatha devotional poetry tradition in Kannada. Digitised 21,000 verses from the government's 15-volume Samagra Vachana Samputa, converted to Unicode, and made searchable with a concordance tool. Over 200,000 unique words indexed; thousands of daily readers.

vachana.sanchaya.net

Sanchi Foundation

Co-founded

A registered non-profit dedicated to the documentation and preservation of audio-visual cultural heritage in Karnataka. Has collected 600–700 hours of high-quality video recording of Kannada literature, theatre, and the performing arts.

sanchifoundation.org

Servants of Knowledge

Co-founded c. 2019

Open digitisation initiative (with Carl Malamud / Public Resource) depositing public-domain Indian texts in over 100 languages on the Internet Archive. 1.4 million pages scanned per month as of 2024; 100,000+ titles; 500 million views.

archive.org/details/ServantsOfKnowledge

Linuxaayana

2006–present

The blog that started it all — Kannada-language writing on free software, open source, and technology. One of the earliest sustained Kannada-medium technology publications.

linuxaayana.net

SoK Academy

2024–present

Free training programmes in copyright law, open-source technologies, archiving, scanner design, OCR, data uploading, and library management — offered online and in-person to librarians, students, and volunteers.

Current Activities

Omshivaprakash continues to lead the India operations of Servants of Knowledge, overseeing an expanding network of institutional digitisation partnerships. As of 2024, active projects include the Gandhi Bhavan library (completed: 12,000+ books handed over to Gandhi Bhavan heads across India at a national seminar inaugurated by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah), the National Law School of India University library, Azim Premji University, Lalbagh's Horticulture library, Hampi Kannada University, and publishers including Motilal Banarsidass. Under discussion are the libraries of Assam theatre archives, IIT Madras, the Archaeological Survey of India, and the Karnataka Archaeological Society. He is also involved in the Servants of Knowledge Academy, which offers free training workshops for librarians and archivists on all aspects of the digitisation pipeline. Through Sanchaya, he continues to build linguistic technology tools for Kannada, including font archives and natural-language processing resources. On social media he regularly documents the work of the SoK teams in the field and advocates for the open-access cause under the rallying cry Jai Gyan!

Affiliations: Servants of Knowledge (India Operations Lead) · Sanchaya (Founder) · Sanchi Foundation (Co-Founder/Producer) · Techfiz Inc. (CEO & Founder) · Kannada Wikipedia (Sysop, since 2007)

Blog: linuxaayana.net  |  blog.shivu.in