The project leaders call the website a ‘portal’ of Kannada Online Jnanakosha, and it aims to collect Kannada works online to share them royalty-free.
It was launched in December 2009 with sections for art, literature, science, environment, media, history, technology and business, but its development has been slow. Fifteen months since its inception, project leaders said they had built up a database of 18 lakh words that now needed editing and review. Kanaja introduced a reader-friendly interface this week and plans to develop an audio interface to read out text for the visually-challenged and the illiterate.
Rashtrakavi Dr G S Shivarudrappa and Jnanapeeth awardee Dr U R Ananthamurthy have agreed in principle to share all their works on Kanaja.