The Access Pennsylvania Database:
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 July 1, 2005, 2,875 School, Public, Academic and Special libraries participate in the Access Pennsylvania Database project, as follows:

• 103 Academic Libraries
• 696 High School Libraries
• 388 Middle School Libraries
• 1,024 Elementary School Libraries
• 549 Public Libraries
• 86 Special Libraries
• 29 Intermediate Units

The Database contains approximately 11.7 million titles and over 50 million items.

The Access Pennsylvania Database, a directory of Participating Libraries, an electronic version of the Procedures Manual, and other pertinent information, is available at http://accesspa.state.pa.us.