The National Institute of Library & Information Science (NILIS), University of Colombo, has won the Bronze Award in the \u201cBest Sinhala\/Tamil AI and Localization Innovation\u201d category at the National AI Awards 2026. Evaluated by industry experts during AI WEEK, the awards recognize Sri Lanka’s premier artificial intelligence solutions and innovators. The AI WEEK was jointly organized by the Ministry of Digital Economy, GovTech Sri Lanka, and SLT-MOBITEL from September 25 to 30, 2026.<\/p>\n
This prestigious national tech award was awarded for CATMELK V.2.0, an innovative AI-driven library cataloging application developed by Prof. Ruwan Gamage of NILIS. Built to solve practical workflow challenges, CATMELK (pronounced CAT-MEE-EL-KAY) reduces the time required to catalog a book into an online system from 20 minutes to just a few minutes. As Prof. Gamage was attending another function out of Colombo, Prof. Indika Karunathilake, Vice Chancellor of the University of Colombo, accepted the award on behalf of NILIS at the September 30th ceremony.<\/p>\n
Prior to this national technology recognition, CATMELK earned three major LIS accolades: the University Librarians\u2019 Association\u2019s Innovator of the Year Award (2024), the Emerald South Asia LIS Research Fund Award (2024), and the Sri Lanka Library Association Vijita de Silva Research Award (2026).<\/p>\n
This cross-disciplinary victory highlights a significant milestone for NILIS. It proves that the deep domain expertise of Library and Information Science; organizing information, understanding user needs, and facilitating discovery, can successfully merge with emerging AI technologies to deliver meaningful, human-centered digital innovations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The National Institute of Library & Information Science (NILIS), University of Colombo, has won the Bronze Award in the \u201cBest Sinhala\/Tamil AI and Localization Innovation\u201d category at the National AI Awards 2026. Evaluated by industry experts during AI WEEK, the awards recognize Sri Lanka’s premier artificial intelligence solutions and innovators. The AI WEEK was jointly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5615,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[67],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilis.cmb.ac.lk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5614"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilis.cmb.ac.lk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilis.cmb.ac.lk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilis.cmb.ac.lk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilis.cmb.ac.lk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nilis.cmb.ac.lk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5616,"href":"https:\/\/nilis.cmb.ac.lk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5614\/revisions\/5616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilis.cmb.ac.lk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilis.cmb.ac.lk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilis.cmb.ac.lk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilis.cmb.ac.lk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}