The Panjab Digital Library, working since 2003, digitises Punjabi manuscripts, newspapers, books, photographs and records, and puts them online free.
Its method is to take the equipment to the material rather than asking for the material to be brought in, which is the only method that works when the holders are families, gurdwaras and deras that will not part with what they have.
It has digitised millions of pages, including manuscript birs, hukamnamas, early Punjabi periodicals and the files of newspapers that survive nowhere else in complete runs.
It has worked with institutions in India, Pakistan and abroad.
It is a small organisation doing at a fraction of the cost what two state governments have not done, and its work is the reason a researcher can now read Punjabi material that was inaccessible twenty years ago.
It is funded largely by donation and its continuation is not guaranteed by anything.
It has scanned manuscripts, rare books, newspapers, photographs and gurdwara records, working from private collections, deras, families and institutions that would not hand material to a government body.
The newspaper runs it holds, particularly the Punjabi papers of the early twentieth century, are in many cases the only surviving complete files.
It runs on donations, largely from the diaspora, and on a small staff. What it has done in twenty years is more than the state has done in seventy.