Bringing Balinese Manuscripts to Wikimania 2026

At Wikimania 2026 in Paris, Carma Citrawati and I presented “From Wikilontar to Wikisami: How Regional Partnerships Power Community-Led Growth in Bali.” The session explored how a local initiative to preserve Balinese manuscripts gradually developed into a regional learning program and, later, engagement with international memory institutions. Carma opened the session by introducing the audience to lontar, traditional Balinese manuscripts containing knowledge about history, literature, spirituality, medicine, and everyday life. Many of these manuscripts are fragile, difficult to access, or held in collections outside Bali. To make the story more tangible, Carma brought a copy of a lontar manuscript from Bali, written on palm leaves. Seeing the manuscript in person helped the audience understand that this work is not only about digitizing old documents. It is also about reconnecting communities with living knowledge passed down through generations. We shared the journey through three connected stages. Wikilontar began with the Balinese community’s own concern for preserving its manuscripts. Volunteers learned to digitize, describe, transcribe, and upload the materials while building trust with manuscript owners and cultural custodians. The initiative showed that effective partnerships should begin with community-defined priorities, rather than externally designed projects. Through Wikisource Loves Manuscripts, or WILMA, the experience from Bali became part of a broader regional learning process. The community was no longer only receiving support; it was also sharing its experience with other language communities facing similar challenges. This helped build confidence and encouraged longer-term thinking about cultural heritage stewardship. The next stage, Wikisami, seeks to connect Balinese communities with digitized manuscript collections held by institutions such as Leiden University Libraries and the British Library. The goal is not simply to place images online but to improve metadata, add cultural and linguistic context, involve students, and help reconnect collections held abroad with communities in Bali. The session also highlighted how the role of regional partners should evolve over time. At the beginning, they may provide technical support, help communities navigate institutional processes, and open doors to new relationships. But as the community’s experience and confidence grow, regional partners should gradually step back and create space for community members to represent their own knowledge, priorities, and aspirations directly. We were grateful to receive positive feedback from the audience about the initiative and its community-led approach. The discussion reinforced that success should not be measured only by the number of manuscripts digitized or pages uploaded but also by stronger community ownership, confidence, capacity, and the ability to engage institutions as equal partners. The journey from Wikilontar to WILMA and Wikisami shows what becomes possible when regional partnerships invest in trust, stay beyond a single grant cycle, and create space for communities to lead. Technology can preserve a digital file, but relationships preserve its meaning. Can you help us translate this article? In order for this article to reach as many people as possible we would like your help. Can you translate this article to get the message out? Start translation