The WiderNet Project
• Since 2000, building capacity at African institutions for
academic collaborations
• 4,700+ participants from 36 institutions across subSaharan Africa and India (~30% women)
• Collected over $2,100,000 in new & used hardware,
software for partners in Africa
• Refurbished and shipped 1,200+ used computers for
partner universities in Nigeria, Liberia, and Ethiopia
• 700+ volunteers have put in over 15,000 hours
• Focus on practical, cost effective solutions
• Helping to build a digital culture (best practices, user
groups, student internships, gender equity…)
“see one – do one – teach one”
The Reality of the Internet Cost
• Freakishly expensive: 100x U.S.
– Liberia 2011 : $150K for dedicated 1mbit
• Beware the aristocratic “Oh, let them buy
bandwidth” attitude.
• 800 lb. gorilla effect
• Bandwidth Blackmail
• Internet an extraordinary sacrifice for
institutions with other very compelling needs
The Reality of the Internet Connection
• Very slow: no audio/video, PDF paranoia
• Can only be used by a handful of users
• “Forget it between 10am and 3pm” as
connection is saturated.
• Very rarely 24 x 7. Many institutions hard
pressed to deliver 6 hours a day
• Frequent lapses of a day or more
– Occasional lapses of a week or more
Mobile is King
• Europe 120%, Africa 53%
• mHealth, mGovernance, mCommerce
• Feature phones still outsell smartphones
4:1
• Usage is significantly different; rarely
smorgasbord in developing countries
• Texting, email most common
The eGranary Digital Library
“The Internet in a Box”™
Replacing Bandwidth
with Storewidth
• 4,000+ GB information store inside LAN
• Over 30 Million educational documents
• Collection created and maintained by librarians
• Multimedia, audio, video at full network speeds
• No bandwidth costs
• Augments a conventional Internet connection
 Internet
LAN 
The eGranary Digital Library can provide
thousands of networked computers high-speed
access to millions of documents and multimedia
files over a local area network.
Even when the Internet connection is broken!
X
 Internet
LAN
The eGranary is already installed in more than
450 schools, hospitals, clinics, and universities
in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
The eGranary Digital Library
• Permission from over 1,800 authors & publishers
(MIT OpenCourseware, Wikipedia, WHO, Math
TV, Virtual Hospital, Khan Academy, etc.)
• Over 30 million documents
• 50,000+ books, hundreds of journals, hundreds
of Web sites & CDs
• Patrons open documents 100 – 5,000 times
faster than with their Internet connection
• Built-in search engine and catalog. Looks and
acts just like the Internet.
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WiderNet Project Internet Speed Test
Average Bandwidth by Organization in Kbits
70,000
9/21/04 -- 300+ tests
65,445
60,000
An eGranary on a LAN is 4 to 5
times faster than an Internet
connection at a U.S. university
30,000
17,103
10,000
13
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2010 Evaluation Program
Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation
• Logistics of implementing the eGranary
highly dependent on the enthusiasm of a
champion
• Many of our subscribers do not expect or
use technical support
• Never enough access points (computers)
• Information literacy the most daunting
task faced by librarians and instructors
User-Friendly Portals
• Having access to information is one thing,
being able to use it well to meet a specific
purpose is another
• Portals organize information into userfriendly, issue-centric interfaces
– Health care, education, water development,
etc.
• Reduces the time and effort for new users
to integrate digital resources into their
mission
Solidarity Librarianship
• Area librarianship for groups of people with similar
needs/goals
• One half of good service is about
listening
• Wisdom of the crowd
• Reduces the time and effort for
new users to integrate digital
resources into their mission
Health Care Training in Zambia
With colleagues at universities in Zambia
and the Sparkman Center for Global Health
at the University of Alabama at
Birmingham, we have identified, collected,
cataloged 1,500+ resources and developed
collections for teaching medicine, nursing
and midwifery, and public health.
Liberian medical students exploring The Bones
of the Skull, a 3-D interactive software.
Global Disability Rights Library
• Networked with 100+ U.S. groups, international
advisory board, and field partners to identify
needs & resources.
• Over 2 million new disability rights resources
added to the eGranary
• Thousands of these resources catalogued and
mapped to 10 portals
• Curricula developed for training disability rights
advocates
Community Information Platform
Sponsored by the Intel Corporation
• CIP adds interactive “Web 2.0” capabilities
– Create IDs and logins (LDAP security)
– Built-in software for making unlimited Web sites
• Easy to upload and share locally-made content
• Local content can be centrally developed and
shared to other eGranary sites
• MySQL and PHP for local dynamic Web databases
• Moodle: course management software
• Drupal: Web content management system
• WordPress: Blog software
Knowlegesphere
Wi-Max
Backbone
LAN
Knowlegesphere
Gov’t Offices
Clinics/Hospitals
Universities
Schools
Churches/Mosques
Private Homes
Internet Cafés
New Computers
Refurbished Computers
OLPC
Mobile Phones
Kiosks
Laptops
Pocket Computers
Knowlegesphere
Serve Millions of
Educational Resources to
Gov’t
Offices
New Computers
Thousands
of
Patrons…
Clinics/Hospitals
Refurbished Computers
Universities
Schools
Churches/Mosques
Private Homes
Internet Cafés
OLPC
Mobile Phones
Kiosks
Laptops
Pocket Computers
The Cost of Internet
Connection???
Silos in the eGranary
eGranary
Local
Others
Web Content
Web Content
Web Content
Software
Catalog
Software
Catalog
Software
Catalog
Index
Index
Index
Data
Data
Data
Silos Combine into Single View
eGranary
Local
Web Content
Software
Catalog
Index
Data
Others
New Silos Snap-In / Snap-Out
Registered Silos
Web Content
Web Content
Software
Catalog
Software
Catalog
Index
Index
Data
Data
Silos Offer Flexibility
• Anyone can make a silo
• Silos can be made for specific
groups or topics
• Ideal for government
documents or local languages
• Silos can be created and
updated centrally, then
distributed via DVD or USB key
Hybrid 12-volt
Power Model
12-volt Core
eGranary Server,
essential 12-volt
computers, and
wireless network
powered 24x7 by deepcycle battery bank.
Hybrid 12-volt
Power Model
12-volt Core
eGranary Server,
essential 12-volt
computers, and
wireless network
powered 24x7 by deepcycle battery bank.
Knowledgesphere
Institutional and
privately-owned
battery-powered
devices running for
hours on their own
charge that can access
the services in the core.
Hybrid 12-volt
Power Model
12-volt Core
eGranary Server,
essential 12-volt
computers, and
wireless network
powered 24x7 by deepcycle battery bank.
Knowledgesphere
Institutional and
privately-owned
battery-powered
devices running for
hours on their own
charge that can access
the services in the core.
Traditional Systems
220-volt new and
refurbished computers
and printers that are
only usable when the
power is on.
What’s Next??
• ILS (Evergreen, Koha…)
• eMail
• Various language versions
• Machine cataloging
• Targeted collections for smartphones, tablets
• Asynchronous return pipe / GSM
• Bandwidth Optimization
• U.S. Prisons, etc.
Lessons from a Sandbox
or, “What goes around….”
• Easy networking has been done
• Better distinctions about information
• Solidarity librarianship
• Community information is key
• Big difference between “doing no evil”
and doing what’s right
• The more things change…
The eGranary Digital Library
Delivers!
The eGranary Digital Library
The WiderNet Project
The School of Library and Information Science
University of Iowa
http://www.egranary.org
Cliff Missen
missenc@widernet.org
Presenter: