Mysore University Library and Information Science Student Association (MULISSA) organised a lecture on "Kannada in Computers" by Dr. Panditaradhya, a well-known speaker in this region. It was held at the Department of Library and Information Science, University of Mysore, Mysore on 7th November 2007. The lecture was the third one in the series of "Friday talks" for the current year. Because of the festive week, the lecture was advanced to Wednesday itself. In his speech, Dr. Panditaradhya said that a language is basically learnt orally. The oral communication has been dominating the written communication for centuries. The invention of printing press by Gutenberg has enhanced the impact of written communication over the society. The emergence of computing and communicating technologies has proved a shot in the arm for written communication. Dr. Panditaradhya traced the development of encoding standards from ASCII to ISCII to Unicode to Nudi ( a local standard approved by Government of Karnataka). He said though English was a dominating language in computers, it is not any more. Any script in any language of the world can now be stored in computers. Cashing on his experience in Nudi, the speaker showed how Kannada scripts could be entered in computers. Answering a query from the audience, Prof. Panditaradhya clarified that Nudi employs phonetic based data entry method unlike Baraha which uses transliteration technique for data entry. Compared to its competitors, he said Nudi has several features and is based on scientific studies. Nudi, a product of Kannada Ganaka Parishat, is a standard approved by Government of Karnataka. Mr. G. N. Narasimha Murthy, Secretary, Kannada Ganaka Parishat who was present during the lecture, gave a demo on "Kannada Viswakosha" (Kannada Encyclopaedia) which was recently released by Prasaranga of University of Mysore, Mysore. He showed browsing, searching, multimedia, audio and other features of the encyclopaedia. Similarly a demo of "Pampa Bharata" a legendary work of 10th century poet Pampa was shown. Vikramarjuna Vijaya, also known as Pampa Bharata, is a Kannada version of the Mahabharata which was originally written by Vyasa. The electronic version of the work, to be released shortly, contains the original poems with meaning and annotations. The oral recitation of the poems both in Gamaka method and normal reading method is given to each poem. The program was well attended by students and staff of MyDLIS, other departments in the campus and general public. The whole programme was managed by the student representatives. -- N.S. Harinarayana, Ph.D Department of Library and Information Science University of Mysore, Manasagangtori Mysore 570 006 Off. Ph: (0821) 2419399 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.