By Prahlada-Nrsmha Das
What is the goal?
To present Srila Prabhupada’s books nicely and to provide powerful research tool for their study.
Brief history
Before the Online Vedabase project came there already had been attempts to present Srila
Prabhupada’s books online (e.g. vedabase.net, vanipedia, …) but my desire was to give Srila Prabhupada’s books in more presentable way and in multiple languages.
First contact with BBT for permission to allow me to make this project was in middle of year 2010, but at that time we were refused permission for there was no need to have such project. Half a year later after meeting with BBT in Sweden we got suggestion to contact Ekanatha Prabhu from Bhaktivedanta Archives. After speaking with Ekanatha Prabhu he invited me for BBT Trustee meeting in Italy where I presented idea of the project and got permissions to have BBT books in all languages.
First version of https://www.vedabase.com was launched on Vyasa Purnima 2011 (15th July). That it included books only in English and Spanish. Over years I was doing small improvements and was gradually adding more books and languages. On Balarama appearance day 2017 we launched new version at https://vedabase.io, which uses a new and more powerful system. Its biggest improvement is that each paragraph is considered as whole unit and all languages are interlinked on paragraph level. That opens us for various possibilities like topical categorization which is applied through all languages at once, dual language view, we can give references to specific paragraph, etc… New version also added ability for users to have own account where reading history and bookmarks are kept.
From that time we spend most of our time in importing books into the new version. Idea is that once we have all books transferred we can remove fully old version and redirect all traffic to new one only. Recently a few devotees are also helping to import (Spanish and Ukrainian). And my wife, Madana Priya devi dasi, disciple of HH Bhaktivaibhava Swami, who is kindly tolerating and supporting my service, is also helping with entering different languages.
Vedabase Spanish
There are devotees helping to import Spanish books into new Vedabase version. It is a great help. In next days SB 4 and 5 will be added to vedabase.io. We are already in half of SB!
-> Pablo Parikrama Das SB 1.5-15, SB 1.17-19, SB 2.3-19, SB 4, SB 5.1-16
-> Isvari Devi Dasi SB 1.16, SB 3.24-30 SB 5.16-26
-> Gandharva Das SB 3
-> Carlos Prabhu SB 2.1-2
Statistics
Recently we lost free ads from Google, so getting 20k+ visits less per month. I would like to apply for ads again, but we will need to file data with TechSoup first.
For last 30 days we have had:
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60,000 users (unique users)
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200,000 visits
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1,000,000 page views
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7m 13s average visit (as far as I know it doesn’t count last visited page, so number should be much higher, especially when people use Advanced Chapter-view)
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42.2% are returning visitors
For the whole existence of the project we have served 46 million page views and people have spent over 100 years of reading there.
Plans
As Krishna is unlimited and always expanding we see Vedabase project to have practically unlimited ways how to expand and spread this spiritual knowledge to all.
Here are some of plans we want to achieve (not necessary in chronological order):
– Improve search [Note: during May 2018 search is going to be added to vedabase.io, but will not have all features we would like it to have, so those will be added later]
– Launch topical categorization (we want to categorize all teachings in our library)
– Digitalization and importing of languages which are not in electronic format yet
– Encyclopedia (more info bellow)
– Online education (more info bellow)
– Video gallery (have all videos from Bhaktivedanta Archives)
– Photo albums (Bhaktivedanta Archives have collections of tens of thousands photos), we want to add meta-tagging (devotees, places, events, date) so it will be nicely searchable
– Time-coding audio with transcripts (3k+ audio and transcripts)
– Proofreading of all letter transcripts (6.5k+ letters)
– Offline readers (desktop, mobile apps for reading all the scriptures without need of internet access) – should work as replacement of current outdated Folio software
– Good support for devices for blind people
– Importing any available books are which supposed to be in Vedabase and all ISKCON historical documents
– Import Back to Godhead magazine (1944-1960)
What Help do We Need?
Most needed help at this moment would be to help us import the books to the new site.
Then there is very intimate and ecstatic service. We have new timecoding feature ready. And we would like to timecode all Srila Prabhupada’s lectures. By listening lectures and marking beginning of each paragraph we will be able to highlight paragraphs as they are spoken for anybody who listens audio and it will be also possible to start audio from specific paragraph.
Another huge help will be to work on category tree, which will be used for topical categorization of all content. Of course, devotees who have degrees or training in indexing and library science would be extremely useful.
Online Education
As far as I know there are various ISKCON education projects which are using Online Vedabase for references or as primary source of the texts.
Once Online Vedabase is developed enough to be considered as perfect research tool I would like to launch other projects whose purpose will be Online Education. We would like to offer multiple online spiritual courses for all levels of spiritual progress. From introductory course up to Bhakti-vaibhava level. Courses will be available for free for everybody and each student will be able to follow it in his own pace. Each topics will be covered in separate video(s) and between them will be short quizzes to keep students alert and help them to absorb teaching better. Online Education will connected with core Vedabase (library), so referenced scriptures will be easily accessible.
Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia pages will cover persons, places, concepts, …. For example if you open page about Arjuna you read info about him and info about all his brothers, parents, … All pages will be interlinked both with other pages and with scriptures from core library. Sometimes we see that university students who don’t have any experience with spiritual and Vedic subjects come to read. For example they will be able to use link from text in the Bhagavad-gita and come to encyclopedia page about ‘karma’ where they will read clear explanation. As other parts of the Vedabase it will be translated into other languages.
Please contact us at: prahlad@vedabase.com
Prahlada-nrsimha Das became initiated in Mar 14, 2010. He joined ISKCON in Czech Republic in 2001. His main service is to develop the Online Vedabase hoping to please Srila Prabhupada by distributing his teachings.
This is a brief report on https://vedabase.io and https://www.vedabase.com [legacy version which will be redirected to new version soon]
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