Jainpedia Project Blog

Oxford Family Day Registration

jgudka — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:41:40 +0000

To download this form, please right click on the image and click 'save image as'. Alternatively, please email jayni.gudka@jainpedia.org

To commemorate the launch of the Jain Manuscript Exhibition at Oxford University’s Bodleian Libraries, JAINpedia would like to invite you to a very special Family Day Event in Oxford.

The day will include:
- Make & Take Activities
- Museum Trails and Activities
- Family Quizzes
- Storytelling
- Handling Jain Artefacts
- JAINpedia Travelling Exhibition
- And much much more!!
All for a minimal donation of just £5* per person
*(including coach transport from and to NW London!)

To find out more about this event please email jayni.gudka@jainpedia.org

To reserve your place for this exciting event, please print and complete this registration form, and send it with a cheque to the following address:

Usha Shah (Oxford Family Day)

Unit 18, Silicon Business Centre
28 Wadsworth Road
Perivale, Greenford,
Middlesex, UB6 7JZ

Fascinating and fragile: a contemporary approach to making manuscripts accessible

jgudka — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:35:42 +0000

One of the major parts of the JAINpedia project has been to make it easier for people all around the world to access the huge treasure trove of Jain Manuscripts that has been produced over hundreds of years. We thought that one of the most effective ways for us to do this was to digitise them – helping us to preserve the ancient knowledge, and share it with people everywhere.

We would like to invite you to a special Jain Study Day on Saturday the 24^th of March at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, where we shall share our inspiring story with you. Tickets for this very special event can be booked through the V&A website.

Media & Editorial Internship

jgudka — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:42:44 +0000

This is a fantastic chance for a New Media, Computing or Humanities student to gain essential work experience working with King’s College London on a project of global importance. The candidate will gain an insight into the day-to-day running and duties of a busy team whilst developing their own skills in content development. This opportunity will be an invaluable to their CV when applying for future roles.

About JAINpedia

JAINpedia is a 5 year project taking Jainism into the 21st century. Besides a rich online website showcasing rare and sacred manuscripts, the project is conducting a series of exhibitions, cultural events, and educational activities. The technical work for this project is undertaken at King’s College London. (For more information, visit our new beta-site at www.jainpedia.org )

Main tasks

Assist the content manager
Media sourcing
Populating the website
Compiling data

Skills/experience required:

An excellent command of English is essential
Advanced computer skills
Editing and journalistic writing experience is useful
Excellent attention to detail
Knowledge in Jainism, Indian Art, Indian languages, Manuscripts and History is useful
Excellent organisational skills and a flexible approach to work

You must:

Be able to commit to a minimum of 4 months working
Be available to work 4-5 days a week (at King’s College London)
Previous research experience (highly desirable)
Flexible (role will include occasion travel)
Be able to take direction and report progress on your work with others
Be able to manage projects independently, with limited management direction, as required

To Apply for this role, please send a CV and covering letter to jayni.gudka@jainpedia.org. Interviews will be held on the week commencing the 23rd of January.

Only a few hours till we launch the JAINpedia beta-site

jgudka — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:38:21 +0000

Yes, the day we have all been so excited about is finally here, as we count down the hours left until JAINpedia goes global! But as we approach the launch, we thought it would be nice to share what launching the beta site actually means…

The launch of the beta-site marks one of the closing milestones before the website is released as a final version. This means that the website is not completely finished but is quite close in terms of material and technical functionality.

The most important part of beta testing is identifying and fixing ‘bugs’. A ‘bug’ is a case of the website’s not working properly so a website visitor gets incorrect or unexpected results, for example when loading a page or clicking on a hyperlink.

A beta trial is not a way of adding new features to the site. Rather, it gathers feedback from website visitors – often called end-users – on how well the website works before it is finally released. End-users often give feedback on the usability of the website too, which means how useful, easy and satisfying it is to use or learn how to use.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Beta site – what to expect

While you explore this beta website, you should bear in mind that you may come across one or more of the following:

instability of the website and its features
bugs or errors that happen on every page or every time you click on the same thing on different pages
bugs that happen just once
inconsistent experiences with the website, for example the same feature looks or behaves differently on various pages or at different times
times when the website is unavailable
bugs that you have reported already are not fixed.

Although such bugs and behaviours are normal on a beta site, they need to be recorded and reported to ensure there are no underlying problems. When you report a bug, the technical developers log it and begin working out how to fix it. While they are fixing bugs and testing the fixes, sometimes the website will not be online for you to look at. These periods are unavoidable but we will try to make sure this happens as little as possible.

How to feed back

Please use the feedback tabs around the site to let us know if you come across any bugs. Simply click on the red tab on the left of a page to open up the form, fill it in and send it to us.We need your email address so that if anything is unclear we can contact you for more details of the bug you have found.

Please note that all feedback is strictly confidential. If your bugs are not fixed quickly, don’t think that we haven’t received them or that we are ignoring them. All bugs are logged but it takes time to review them and then to fix them. Sometimes fixing one bug creates another, so it can be more time-consuming than expected to fix something that seems quite simple at first.

Finally, we’d like to thank you for your interest and support for this project, and look forward to hearing what you think about the website. Getting this far has taken a great deal of hard work from the JAINpedia team and a lot of other people but we’re very excited that you can now see what we’ve been developing.

12th December 2011 – launch of JAINpedia beta-site!

jgudka — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:43:46 +0000

The moment you have all been waiting for is finally here!

We are pleased to announce that we shall be launching our JAINpedia beta site on Monday the 12^th of December 2011.

The website features digitised pages from Jain manuscripts, articles written by Professor Nalini Balbir and other academics from around the world, and much much more.

For those of you who can’t wait till the 12^th of December, we have a sneaky peak of website for you to enjoy…

Watch this video on YouTube.

JAINpedia site demo at Mumbai’s Mahalaxmi Race Course on Friday 14th October

jgudka — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:14:45 +0000

Friday 14^th October marked a very special date in the Jainpedia calendar, as the trustees of the Institute of Jainology demonstrated the new JAINpedia beta site at a launch in Mumbai’s prestigious Gallop’s Banqueting Halls, Mahalaxmi Race Course. The website, which has taken over three years to build, was demonstrated by JAINpedia Director Dr Mehool Sanghrajka.

For all of you who are eagerly awaiting the release of the website - we will be launching it sometime in the end of November. To be the first to find out, why not follow us on twitter or join our facebook page ?

Ahimsa Day 2011, a great success! Award won by Nitin Mehta

bmehta — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:23:27 +0000

The Institute of Jainology’s nineth annual Ahimsa Day commemoration at the House of Commons, held on 12th October 2011 was a tremendous success. This annual event, sponsored by the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative ‘Friends of India’ groups, was attended by MPs, Ministers, Lords and the Jain community amongst others.

Ahimsa Day celebrates the central Jain tenet of ‘non-violence’ as a means to peace, positivity and prosperity, encouraging MPs, Lords and Ministers to discuss how current world issues can be considered from an alternative ‘compassionate’ perspective.

The focus of this year’s Ahimsa Day was Climate Change and the Contemporary World, a theme on the minds of many people around the world who are seeing first-hand the catastrophic effects of global warming.
The keynote speaker for the evening was Mr Phil Wynn Owen, the Director General for International Climate Change & Energy Efficiency in the Department of Energy & Climate Change [DECC]. He reminded us that even though we in the United Kingdom, contribute to less than 2% of the world’s carbon dioxide omissions, it is our duty to set an example and find ways of helping other countries, within the EU and elsewhere, to reduce their emissions and take active measures to slow down the pace of Climate Change.

The inspiring speech about what we could do to make positive changes for the world of our children was followed by Dr Mehool Sanghrajka, Director of Education at the Institute of Jainology, who responded with the Jain view on Climate Change and the Contemporary World. He reminded us of two basic premises of Lord Mahavira’s 2500 year old philosophy, perhaps the greatest environmentalist theory in our history:

The earth is a living entity and we are interdependent. We should respect the right of all life to exist, and learn to live in harmony with it rather than exploiting it.
The earth has enough resources for all. It is accumulation by the few that is the cause of the scarcity. We should learn to live within what we need.

He explained that these two principles offer us all the solutions that we need to solve the problems that the world is facing, if we based our actions and thoughts on science rather than politics!
The evening’s programme ended with the presentation of the Ahimsa Award for 2011 to Mr Nitin Mehta of Croydon UK, for his selfless contribution to the causes of vegetarianism and compassion for animal life. As the founder of the Young Indian Vegetarians Society and an active resident of the Croydon Council, the Board of the Institute of Jainology were unanimous in their decision of awarding Nitin Mehta’s efforts in promoting Ahimsa in this way. The award was presented by Lady Dholakia on behalf of the Institute.

The celebrations of this year’s Ahimsa was another great success, and with an open invitation to hold a future Ahimsa Day at the House of Lords, we hope that we can continue to spread the message of Ahimsa even further!

Ahimsa Day to be Celebrated on 12th October 2011

bmehta — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:46:04 +0000

Yet another year of Ahimsa Day at the House of Commons and we look forward to the announcement of the winner of the Ahimsa Award this year.
Last year’s winner, Nalini Balbir a renown Indologist and scholar honoured the Institute of Jainology and most graciously accepted the award, with a detailed and interesting account of her beginnings in Jainism and her special relationship with the Institute of Jainology. Her continued work with the Institute will soon be portrayed at the demonstration and launch of the Jainpedia Beta site in Mumbai, India on 14th October 2011. For more details on the Launch please contact us on info@jainpedia.org. A Launch in London is also planned in a few weeks, look out for more details on this.
This year’s event at the House of Commons, has key note speaker Mr Phil Wynn Owen, Director General, International Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, from the Department of Energy and Climate Change will be the keynote speaker. He will be speaking about Climate Change and The Contemporary World. Look out for a report on the event next week.

Marvellous Manuscripts at the V&A

bmehta — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 12:54:46 +0000

A reminder to everyone, that to celebrate the upcoming Paryushana Festival, the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington, London are having a series of events and activities at the museum on Sunday, 21^st August

Drop-in Design

Make your own manuscript

10.30–17.00, Lunchroom 1, Sackler Centre

Pick up a design challenge, hunt for ideas in the galleries, and then create your own fantastic manuscript using eco-friendly paper and lentils.

Jain Storytelling

11.00, 13.00 & 15.00

South Asia Gallery

Join storyteller Seema Anand for an interactive tale about animals!

Jain Family Tours

12.00, 14.00 and 16.00

South Asia Gallery

The V&A is home to a world renowned collection of Jain manuscripts and objects. Join a free guided tour especially for families by Jainpedia volunteers.

This day of free events is presented by the V&A in partnership with Jainpedia and supported by the Jain Art Fund

Find out more at http://www.vam.ac.uk/families

An Eventful ‘Mela’

bmehta — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 17:30:50 +0000

The Oshwal Association of the UK organised a large ‘mela’ on Sunday, 24th July with a funfair, trade stalls, vegan food and games galore, it was an eventful day out for all who attended.

An estimated 6000 people attended the event, with many coming in to see us at the colourful JAINpedia stall. Raising awareness of the commendable project was one of our objectives, and achieved substantially, with hundreds signing up for the future JAINpedia e-newsletter.

: The Institute of Jainology and Jainpedia team talk to event attendees about the Jainpedia project at the Oshwal ‘Mela’

The Institute of Jainology team, as always stood out in the orange JAINpedia t-shirts, and talked to people about the project objectives, achieved milestones and showed people screenshots of the upcoming comprehensive and well – designed JAINpedia website. All were impressed at how much would be viewable on the site from digitized manuscripts zoomable to the minutest details, to ample information about Jainism through related articles, written by scholars and experts from around the world.

Further to this, young university students were encouraged to spend some time during their holidays, volunteering for JAINpedia events and website work; several signing up just to know more about their own culture.

A fruitful day for the project and much fun for the team. A full article of the event can be found on the Institute of Jainology Site soon.