A group of academic and school libraries, as well as the Nashville Public Library and the Tennessee State Library and Archives, have joined together in a consortium called the Nashville Area Library Alliance (NALA) in support of the Nashville-area learning community. These libraries will be investigating means by which they can share their collections more broadly in support of all individuals in learning.

Athena is a virtual library catalog of some of the member libraries of NALA. A patron at any participating library can simultaneously search the library catalogs of a number of the participating institutions to determine where a book is located. Books so identified may be requested through the patron's home library on interlibrary loan. For this project, an expedited interlibrary loan service has been established.