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.
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Facts Only
* Carma Citrawati presented at Wikimania 2026 in Paris.
* The presentation topic was “From Wikilontar to Wikisami: How Regional Partnerships Power Community-Led Growth in Bali.”
* Lontar are traditional Balinese manuscripts containing knowledge about history, literature, spirituality, medicine, and everyday life.
* A copy of a lontar manuscript was shown to illustrate the focus on reconnecting communities with living knowledge.
* Wikilontar began with the Balinese community's concern for preserving manuscripts.
* Volunteers digitized, described, transcribed, and uploaded materials while building trust with custodians.
* The experience moved through three stages: Wikilontar, Wikisource Loves Manuscripts (WILMA), and Wikisami.
* Wikisami seeks to connect Balinese communities with digitized collections held by institutions like Leiden University Libraries and the British Library.
* Regional partners should evolve from providing technical support to creating space for community representation.
* Success is measured by community ownership, confidence, capacity, and equitable partnership with institutions, not just digitization metrics.
Executive Summary
The presentation at Wikimania 2026 focused on the evolution of community-led growth through regional partnerships in Bali, tracing a journey from manuscript preservation to international engagement. The initiative began with a local effort involving the digitization and transcription of Balinese lontar manuscripts, initiated by the community's concern for preservation. This stage emphasized that effective partnership starts with community priorities, focusing on building trust while volunteers handled tasks like digitizing and uploading materials.
The experience expanded through Wikisource Loves Manuscripts (WILMA), transforming the local effort into a regional learning process where the community shared its experience with other language communities facing similar heritage challenges. The subsequent stage, Wikisami, aims to connect Balinese communities with digitized collections held by international institutions, such as the British Library and Leiden University Libraries, focusing on improving metadata and providing cultural context rather than just placing images online.
The session also addressed the necessary evolution of regional partnerships over time. Initially, partners provided technical support; later, they should step back to allow communities to directly represent their own knowledge and aspirations. Success was defined not only by output metrics like digitized manuscripts but also by increased community ownership, confidence, capacity, and the ability for local groups to act as equal partners with institutions. The overarching message is that while technology preserves digital files, the relationships built foster the meaning of that heritage.
Full Take
The narrative presents a deliberate trajectory of empowerment achieved through phased engagement, suggesting that legitimacy in heritage stewardship stems from relational depth rather than purely transactional outcomes. The shift described—from externally designed projects to community-defined priorities, and from technical support to autonomous representation—points toward a critical understanding of power dynamics within knowledge systems. The central tension lies between the potential for external institutional access (Wikisami) and the necessity of internal sovereignty over that heritage.
The mechanism explored relies on trust as the primary investment. When regional partners transition from being external facilitators to allowing local communities to define their own knowledge, the success metric shifts from output volume to internal capacity building. This challenges the assumption that technological deployment inherently equates to cultural empowerment; rather, it suggests technology is a tool whose value is mediated entirely by the relational framework surrounding it.
The underlying implication is that sustainable stewardship requires decoupling preservation efforts from dependency on external cycles or grants. The final statement—"Technology can preserve a digital file, but relationships preserve its meaning"—is an assertion about epistemology: meaning resides in context, lineage, and community connection, not merely in data storage. This positions regional partnerships as necessary conduits for ensuring that the 'how' of preservation respects inherent cultural autonomy.
Bridge Questions: If community ownership is the ultimate measure of success, what specific metrics can be established to evaluate the quality of trust built versus the quantity of material shared? How can institutional engagement be structured to ensure that access to external collections reinforces, rather than supersedes, local knowledge systems? What structural changes are required within international memory institutions to align their archival practices with principles of community-led stewardship?
Sentinel — Human
The article details a multi-stage community-led initiative to digitize Balinese manuscripts, emphasizing that success relies on building trust and shifting partnerships from external support to genuine community leadership.