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To meet the information needs of isolated primary care providers and t heir patients in the United States (U.S.) Navy, a digital health sciences library - Virtual Naval Hospital (http://www.vnh.org) - was created through a unique partnership between academia and government. The creation of the digital library was heavily influenced by the principles of user-centered design, and made allowances for the nomadic nature of the digital librarys patrons and the heterogeneous access they have to Internet bandwidth. The result is a digital library that has been in operation since 1997, that continues to expand in size, that is heavily used, and that is highly regarded by its patrons. Over time, the digital library has evolved into a knowledge-management system for the U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. A number of valuable technical, personal, and political lessons have been learned about delivering digital library and knowledge management services to nomadic patrons. They can be summarized by stating that to succeed in the design and implementation of a digital library that serves as a knowledge management tool, regardless of the field of endeavor, one must focus initially and then consistently on the population served and what their mission is, and tailor the digital library to their needs. If this is done, the result will be a tool that is heavily used and sincerely appreciated. These lessons learned will become increasingly valuable as society moves towards a ubiquitous computing environment.