Bhubaneswar: Contributors celebrated the third anniversary of Odia language Wikisource here recently.

As a free online Odia language library, it has 703 Odia books donated by individuals and authors under free-licence terms.

More than 15 contributors from different parts of the country took part in the workshop to learn about digitisation of books.

Around 12 books, including Padartha Bidya Sara by The Rev. A. Sutton, were also added to the platform.

A sister project of Odia Wikipedia, it was started in October 2014 and has worked to digitise rare books that are no longer under copyright. It also encourages authors and publishers to licence their work for free.

"This licence allows anyone free use of the work with due attribution and ensures easy access so that people can share these works for citations and references," said Sailesh Patnaik, a member of the community.

"The community members plan to digitise 20 more books by next year," he said.

Sakuntala Baliarsingh, renowned writer and translator, and lyricist and writer Bijay Malla joined the celebrations. "In the digital age, Internet is an integral part of our lives and we can't deny its importance as a source of information," she said.

Malla said: "It is time to archive our heritage and important books on e-libraries, as most libraries are not accessible to everyone, and this will help people to access all kinds of books."

The community has also signed a letter of intent with the Bhubaneswar Development Authority to work on projects such as documentation of 100 selected heritage sites across the city on their BhubaneswarOne.in website.