CHENNAI: New resources are coming up to bridge the digital divide. These economically-viable alternatives can cater to institutions lacking adequate Internet access.

One such resource is the eGranary, a digital library project of the University of Iowa. Project Director Cliff Missen was at the University of Madras on Monday to talk about the resource, which could provide access to millions of documents without an Internet connection.

"We obtain permission from content owners and websites and compile them. At present, we have about three million documents in a 250 gigabyte external drive," said Mr. Missen. He described the project as "the Internet in a box".

The principle behind this portable public library is the same as that of an Intranet system, the data of which is available free to all users of a local area network. Hence, schools, colleges and institutions that want to offer a large amount of information to its members but cannot afford continuous/fast Internet access can use eGranary.

The current edition of eGranary is sold at $350 (about Rs. 16,000), which just covers the production cost. Even the wikipedia is available. Updates can be obtained by paying a fee.

Users of eGranary cannot post the material on the Internet as most of the copyright owners have given the information to be used only for the project. Further, some content owners, who have not published on the Internet, have given the material to eGranary in recognition of its social commitment.

"We are working on a prototype for an eGranary of 500 GB with 8 million documents," said Mr. Missen.

He stressed that eGranary's main objective was not to simply sell the project but to help other countries to develop their own digital libraries.

Because eGranary does not require bandwidth, video and audio documents can be opened within seconds. Padmini Srinivasan, Professor in the Library and Information Sciences department in the University of Iowa, said interactive documents with easy access are very effective tools for teaching in schools.

Search engine

Further, a search engine provision helps users look up material they want. eGranary does not have any popular culture or pornography related documents.

Several educational institutions in Africa use the eGranary. In India, the Chennai-based Tuberculosis Research Centre, Indian Council of Medical Research, is the first to adopt it. RMK Engineering College in Gummidipoondi Taluk will soon use the project on a trial basis.

The eGranary team will visit other parts of Tamil Nadu to discuss the concept of the digital library.

In Chennai, the talk was organised with the support of Madras Library Association, University of Madras and Computer Society of India.

For more details on the project, log on to www.widernet.org/

digitallibrary/india.

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