The Hindu Business Line : Tap gyan from eGranary

Controlling Internet content — from the tedious process of putting up firewalls for every individual Web site to the even more tedious process of assigning a person to walk sternly up and down the corridor peering into screens — is a tricky exercise in cyberspace.

And quite often, students end up with limited access to the Internet at institutions offering connectivity.

WiderNet Project, a service programme at the University of Iowa has come up with a solution to this problem - the eGranary.

The eGranary is a digital library, an innocuous looking box, an external hard drive of sorts, into which the company has downloaded 250 GB of Internet content, while weeding out the unnecessary. The device is then plugged into a server and can be accessed by several computers through intranet. The product was developed initially to bring connectivity to areas that did not have access to information. "One of our core missions is to `serve the information poor without making them too much poorer'," says Cliff Missen, Director, WiderNet. "By this, we mean to develop a high-quality resource that can be delivered at a cost that most schools, clinics, and libraries can afford." Targeted at African schools, the project began with delivering a few CDs to universities in Nigeria, and then moved on to having a full-time staff working on itover the last two years.

Missen says the programme saw over 40 volunteers put in over 2,000 hours since 2001, but since 2003, grants have come in from the US Agency for International Development and the Hewlett Foundation, and the team was able to spend about $450,000 to develop the product.

In Chennai

The programme is in full swing in Africa, and has now spread its wings to include India, or more specifically, Tamil Nadu. Missen and his team were in Chennai earlier this year, demonstrating this technology to local organisations selected by the Tamil Nadu Social Welfare Board. One of the institutes that decided to give the concept a shot is RMK Engineering College, located at Gummidipoondi, about an hour's drive from Chennai. Professor K. Chandrasekaran, Dean of Students, RMK, saysthe institute is working on an understanding with the University of Iowa that they would pay the maintenance cost alone and no additional fee, and in return, would look to market the product here for non-profit reasons alone.

"Since the team that developed the product received external funding for its development, they are not looking for any profit," Prof Chandrasekaran explains."Their aim is to improve Internet accessibility in areas where it is lacking. It is a strictly non-profit project." As a result, the interested institute would have to pay a service cost of Rs 10,000, and for the ensuing updation of information, but nothing for the intellectual property as it were.

The updation period, which hasn't been fixed yet, could be anywhere between six months and a year, he says. But with the World Wide Web being updated almost everyday, wouldn't six months be too long a period of time?

"We have an update mechanism that would allow for subscribers to get updates daily, if they wish," says Missen.

"But while popular culture Web sites change every minute, most educational resources are stable." Some journal publishers only update once a year, and some sites change only 1 per cent of their content every month, so constant updation would be an unnecessary expense, he says. And the information can be customised. Prof Chandrasekaran says, "For example, the eGranary sitting in our institute contains the entire MIT open courseware, which is useful for the students."

The team has a developed methodology by which they cull out the relevant information, he says.

The team at the University of Iowa is not looking to sell the product; rather they want partners to work along with. Currently, there are two eGranaries in India, one at the RMK Engineering College, the other at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) centre. Furthermore, the team has told the Indian partners that if the boxes can be made locally, it can be distributed to anyone as long as it is not commercially exploited.

Prof Chandrasekaran has also been in talks with top representatives at Anna University for spreading awareness of the product and its uses. He also hopes to make it part of the exhibition for innovative products being organised by Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) in December this year.

Going forward, the WiderNet team is looking to develop the next generation of eGranaries, with 500 GB of space that they expect will hold eight million resources. "We have a `wishlist' of over 150 improvements that we'd like to make to the eGranary Digital Library in the next year, and we're getting more requests every week," says Missen.

abhinav@thehindu.co.in