Could offline Internet access bridge the digital divide?

The WiderNet Project is a nonprofit trying to make sure that schools don't need to spend enormous amounts of money just to reach the World Wide Web.

WiderNet, located at the University of North Carolina, believes it has found an answer for communities currently outside of the Internet's reach. Since 2001, the nonprofit has been working on offline solutions to the digital divide. It invented what has been dubbed the “Internet in a box.” The eGranary Digital Library is a disconnected solution to accessing to the Web. The digital library is a central sever that currently holds around 32 million websites, videos, and documents that can be accessed without an Internet connection. WiderNet has partnered with thousands of publishers and institutions to create its archives, which include Wikipedia and Khan Academy, a nonprofit that uploads video lectures to YouTube. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has also worked with the WiderNet, offering its OpenCourseWare and BLOSSOMS programs to the collection.