Planning for this consortium began in 2008 at an auditorium in eastern Nebraska filled with over one hundred librarians wanting to learn more about open source ILS opportunities making their way all across America and onto the plains from exotic locales such as New Zealand.

Four libraries ultimately decided to be pioneers in this effort and with the help of major IMLS federal grant funding through the Nebraska Library Commission, they explored different open source solutions and chose Koha. They formed a Joint Entity through Nebraska state law and city council approval. Instead of utilizing the free community software and spending the time and money to install, host, and maintain it themselves, they engaged the vendor LibLime/PTFS to do it while still saving a considerable amount of money compared to what was being paid to their previous ILS vendors.

Over time, other Nebraska libraries have followed the path they started. Each year more public libraries join, and in 2012 the first non-public library was added. In May 2020 LibLime/PTFS upgraded their system from open-source Koha to the Bibliovation Library Services Platform.