This program offers residents in supported libraries access to over 100 databases indexing thousands of periodicals and scholarly journals.

[5] The namesake of the library system is William Bartram, a well-known American naturalist whose prominence in the area resulted from his four-year journey in the late 1700s through many of the southern colonies as he identified and discovered various flora and fauna.

[6] While Bartram was in east Georgia he is recorded to have stayed in the present-day communities of Mary Willis, Taliaferro, and Thomson-McDuffie during his expeditions for his Elements of Botany Engravings.

Two years later another addition was made to the Mary Willis Library to add more space for book stacks and meeting rooms.

Dr. Willis, a local by birth who had moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1867, left the library as a gift to his hometown and its citizens.

[9] In addition to its current collection of library materials, the Mary Willis Library owns a large and invaluable collection of Wilkes County and other greater Georgia history, including books published by local authors, family memorabilia, and Washington newspapers.

[2] The Mary Willis Library serves Wilkes County in Northeast Georgia, a land area of 470 square miles and a population estimated by the office of planning and budgets to be 10,560.

The increase in space allowed for the creation of meeting rooms as well as the addition of computer capabilities into the present day.

[10] The Taliaferro County Library serves a land area of 195.5 square miles and a population estimated by the office of planning and budgets to be 1,921.