Scott Thomas, Executive Director of Pennsylvania Integrated Library System (PaILS), announced that PaILS saw additional growth in 2017  with the addition of the Bedford County Library System, Memorial Library of Nazareth and Vicinity, Bangor Public Library, Tunkhannock Public Library, Allentown Public Library, Bethlehem Area Public Library, Easton Public Library, and Shamokin Public Library.

All of these libraries are now live on SPARK, the PaILS-operated, open source, Evergreen-based ILS. New libraries for 2018 will include the Huntingdon County Library, Potter-Tioga Library System, and 11 public libraries in Lehigh and Carbon Counties.

This will bring total membership to 122 service outlets. SPARK contains over 4 million items, over 991,000 registered patrons, and saw circulation in 2017 of nearly 4.6 million. 

In October, SPARK also began a resource sharing pilot between the libraries in Lackawanna County, Altoona, and Cambria County.  Thomas explained that the the Evergreen system is designed to share resources among libraries that may not be close geographically. “Instead of having our Porsche idling in traffic, it is great to test drive it on the open road. So far the resource sharing pilot has been a great success.”  Between October and December, the resource sharing pilot generated 3215 additional circulations for the participating libraries.