The Access Pennsylvania Database:   2005.02.15

a project of the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, was started in 1985 as a way to provide a union catalog across the State of Pennsylvania. It was the first and remains the largest statewide union catalog that include the holdings of all types of libraries.
　

The Access Pennsylvania Database Project Today:
represents a coordinated effort to facilitate resource sharing among libraries throughout the Commonwealth via the World Wide Web.
　

As of February 1, 2005, 2869 School, Public, Academic and Special libraries participate in the Access Pennsylvania Database project. The Database contains approximately 11.7 million titles and over 50 million items.
Access Pennsylvania lets users decide what eBooks to buy Users pick 9,000 titles using a patron-driven acquisition model A project of the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, Access Pennsylvania is delivering eBooks to thousands of Pennsylvanians using a new model for collection development. Searchers browse the entire NetLibrary catalog, but the consortium acquires only titles viewed two or more times, creating a truly user-driven eBook collection. Says Joe Scorza, Executive Director of Access PA/HSLC, the patron-driven acquisition model is an ideal funding model because it allows the group to obtain exactly what users want, and shows how eager they are to have eBooks.