The NEOS Library Consortium consists of 17 Canadian university, college, government, and hospital libraries with 49 sites between them. Patrons (i.e. students, faculty, staff) belonging to any NEOS library have seamless access to most of the substantial holdings shared by NEOS members. As of March 31, 2009, NEOS holdings were 10,867,551 volumes (books, periodicals, microform). The substantial additional holdings of electronic books, databases, and journals are not included because licensing arrangements often limit these to primary users of each library. Most NEOS libraries and branches are located in Edmonton or the central and northern areas of Alberta: Camrose, Devon, Fairview, Grande Prairie, Lacombe, Lloydminster, Olds, Red Deer, St. Albert, Sherwood Park, Vegreville. There is one member site in Calgary. NEOS member libraries collaborate in many ways: development and maintenance of a shared on-line integrated library system shared electronic catalogue of consortium holdings shared patron database reciprocal borrowing and reference services interlibrary loan service supported by a document delivery distribution system cooperative collection development continuing education and staff development activities. History and significance In 1994, the University of Alberta Libraries spearheaded an "alliance of academic and government libraries" around Edmonton, Alberta, Canada to "create a union catalogue of their regional holdings." The overall goal, was to "provide cost-efficient access" to the various libraries' respective clients through the sharing of resources. The descriptive acronym NEOS certainly reflected the original task of "Networking Edmonton’s On-line Services” but quickly became obsolete as libraries outside Edmonton joined the consortium; nevertheless, "NEOS" has stuck. In a 2009 interview on the history of the University of Alberta Libraries, Ernie Ingles (Vice-Provost & Chief Librarian) commented on the significance of the NEOS consortium. For example, “People building consortial networks came from places like Minnesota and Ohio to see how we did NEOS, and they’re still coming.” NEOS “is considered so matter-of-fact that no one really thinks about what it is or where it came from. Even now people in the government are often genuinely surprised when they find that their entire government library services are being underpinned by the University of Alberta Library because all of those libraries are part of NEOS, and that most of the colleges north of Olds [Alberta] are also part of NEOS.” “I honestly don’t think that The Alberta Library or the Lois Hole Digital Library would have come into existence without the work we did in creating NEOS.” Member libraries Alberta Geological