eGranary Digital Library — Offline Access to Millions of Learning Resources for Zambia's Medical Schools

The eGranary Digital Library is a plug-and-play offline server, developed since 2000 by the University of Iowa-based non-profit WiderNet Project, that mirrors tens of millions of educational web pages, textbooks and journal articles onto a local hard drive so institutions without a reliable internet connection can browse them as if online.
Beginning in 2008, WiderNet partnered with the Sparkman Center for Global Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham to install 44 eGranary Digital Libraries tailored for Zambian medical schools, organising content into custom subject 'portals' so students and faculty — many without access to up-to-date textbooks — could find course material quickly; teachers could also upload their own materials for students.
Globally, WiderNet has shipped the eGranary to more than 1,600 schools, clinics and universities across Africa, India, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea and Haiti since 2000, reaching an estimated close to 2 million people without regular internet access, according to the organisation and independent coverage in EDUCAUSE Review and the University of Iowa's news office.
A related peer-reviewed case study of e-learning capacity-building for nurse training in Zambia and Ghana, published via ResearchGate, examined the appropriateness of these offline computer technologies for the two countries' training contexts.
The most detailed Zambia figures (44 installations, 2008 start) come from WiderNet's own project reporting rather than an independent audit, and — as an offline mirror rather than a live connection — the library requires periodic physical updates to stay current, a maintenance burden that is not separately quantified in public sources.

Read the full analysis: https://er.educause.edu/articles/2012/10/the-egranary-digital-library