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Northern Waters Library Service is a federated library system which provides services to 27 public libraries across eight Wisconsin counties (Ashland, Bayfield, Burnett, Douglas, Iron, Sawyer, Vilas, and Washburn). [1]
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The system began in 1959 as an agreement between Ashland, Bayfield, Iron, and Price counties to share a bookmobile service. By 1969, the Multi-County Library System had reached its current membership of eight counties. [2] The current form of the organization was established on January 1, 1973, as the Northwest Wisconsin Library System, one of the first created under a state law which provided funding to public library systems. [3] The name was changed to Northern Waters Library Service in 1989. [2]
The system is responsible for Merlin ("My Electronic Resource Library Information Network"), a centralized online catalog for all member libraries which was created in 2000. [2] [4]