About the Project
StoryWeaver is India’s first open source, digital repository of multilingual children’s books from Pratham Books, a non-profit children’s book publisher. As a mission focused, non-profit children’s books publisher, we wanted to provide unfettered access to reading resources in mother tongue languages to all children.
On StoryWeaver, users can access thousands of multilingual stories for free. All content on the platform is openly licensed under CC-BY4.0, one of the most liberal Creative Commons Licenses. Users can read, download and print all stories and images on the platform, as well as use the tools embedded on StoryWeaver to create and translate content into more languages and versions.
StoryWeaver was launched on International Literacy Day in 2015, and since launch it has grown from a repository of 800 stories in 24 languages to one with over 7900 stories in 111 diverse languages of the world. Our 650,000 plus member strong community is spread across over 220 countries and have read our stories both online and offline over 2.6 million times.
StoryWeaver has opened up a stream of collaborations with organizations, both in India and globally. Educators and literacy organisations are using the platform to create resources and share stories in the classroom. Language groups are creating and translating stories to languages often overlooked by mainstream publishing while education technology organizations are gamifying the content for local language learning applications.
StoryWeaver has a simple, clean, non-bandwidth intensive interface that can be accessed via a variety of devices including mobile phones. The stories are available in different resolutions to reduce the data to download and increase the speed of the download. Stories can be downloaded through part-time online access and saved in an offline library for use. All the content is discoverable, interoperable and accessible, and for that all the text on StoryWeaver is Unicode compliant. This has allowed the content to grow and scale seamlessly. The content to be transported to different devices easily, and it also allows users to create content in their desired language without needing to download special language keyboards. This is imperative, with the complexity of having so many global languages in varied scripts.
In addition, Unicode compliance has allowed us to add new languages with relative ease, even those with complex scripts like Khmer. Today, StoryWeaver offers users the chance to read, create and translate stories in a plethora of languages: from mainstream Indian and International languages, to tribal and minority languages, and even languages categorised as threatened or endangered.
By harnessing the power of technology and open licenses and adding the creative power of an engaged community, StoryWeaver is working towards addressing the global scarcity of multilingual reading resources for children.