The "Internet on a microchip"

 A Offline Library Database In a Microchip !
The WiderNet Project, based at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, developed the eGranary Pocket Library — a microchip that taps into the power of smartphones, laptops and tablets to deliver offline information and educational resources to billions of people without access to the Internet.



WiderNet has connected with with ministries of education, ministries of health and schools of information science in various countries, and aims to fill each "library on a chip" with a few thousand documents that a given institution, such as a medical school in Zambia, identifies as its core material.

The project reached its crowdfunding goal in May, and is collaborating with librarians, educators and volunteers around the world to pinpoint the information needed most.

The WiderNet Project, based at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is developing the eGranary Pocket Library. It's a microchip that taps into the power of smartphones, laptops and tablets to deliver offline information and educational resources to billions of people.

Now, the project has launched a $120,000 Indiegogo campaign to take its creation even further.

The microchip is a streamlined version of the eGranary Digital Library, which essentially offers

Since 2001, WiderNet has worked with thousands of publishers, such as Wikipedia, Khan Academy and Project Gutenberg, to copy website content into an offline, searchable database. It currently amounts to about 32 million documents on a 4 terabyte hard drive — all accessible without an Internet connection.an offline imitation of the Internet, via hard drive, to the two-thirds of the world without access.

There are more than 1,000 installations and millions of users of eGranary around the world. Users access the information through a proxy server on a standard web browser — it looks and acts exactly like the Internet.

The idea isn't to fit 4 terabytes of data on a single chip, but rather to miniaturize the eGranary's core technology — a few thousand documents that a given institution, such as a medical school in Zambia, identifies as its core material. These 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB chips can then be inserted into devices delivered to the developing world.

WiderNet Project recently conducted a similar Ebola microchip project. Each chip held thousands of documents and was delivered to affected countries.

"In places like Sierra Leone, 1.7% of the population has Internet, so this was the best way for most people to get access to information," Missen says.

WiderNet will continue to work with various organizations, schools, public libraries and U.S. prisons to implement the project in communities, including library science students in Ethiopia and even the Dalai Lama's people to establish science coursework in Tibetan and English.

However, with devices changing all the time, and the average hard drive lasting only four or five years, won't users be faced with outdated information?

Since it's all educational resources, Missen says that isn't much of a concern. In comparison, as a clinical associate professor in school information and library science, Missen teaches out of a five-year-old text. Today's brand new textbooks are still a few years old before they hit the printer stage.

Users can also make their own updates through a built-in platform and editor. "They're creators as well as consumers of information," Missner says. WiderNet is working with Wikipedia, so communities can edit pages and update information themselves, offlline.Several years ago, WiderNet worked on a project to beam data and updates to the digital libraries via satellite, but it was hugely expensive and there was very little demand. At that point there were about 300 installations; only about six people were willing to spend any money to get the updates. It just wasn't that important.We're really looking at the much larger swath of humanity that needs access to information and basic education, and just simply new ideas, whether it's a 2,000-year-old idea or something that's been in a five-year-old textbook and still has value," he says.

But at a time when companies like Google and Facebook are spearheading Project Loon andInternet.org, both of which eventually aim to "beam" Internet to the developing world, is WiderNet's plan ambitious enough?

"Trillions of dollars have been spent to get one-third of the world connected. 

It's

It's going to cost trillions of dollars to get the other two-thirds of the world connected. This offline stuff is going to make a big difference for a long time," Missen says.

In other words, the eGranary digital and pocket libraries won't bridge the digital divide, but they will help people get there faster. Besides, one of the WiderNet team's core tenets is that they don't prescribe medicines they wouldn't take themselves.

"Nobody here [in the U.S.] is getting their Internet from a balloon. We're all paying $25 to $50 a month to get Internet at home — that's an entire income for people in the developing world," Missen says.

He hopes they will someday have a critical mass out there to be able to inexpensively broadcast updates via satellite.

In the meantime, the WiderNet Project will further collaborate with librarians, educators and volunteers to pinpoint the information needed most.