The U. S. Department of Labor established the National Workforce Assistance Collaborative (NWAC) in 1993 through a cooperative agreement with the National Alliance of Business (NAB) and its partners. NWAC's mission is to help small and mid-sized businesses adopt high performance work practices, become more competitive, and ultimately, to create and retain high-skill, high-wage jobs for American workers. In addition, NWAC was set up to strengthen service and information providers so they can better meet the needs of these businesses in four key areas: workplace literacy, employee training, work restructuring, and labor-management relations.

The Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy at Penn State received a sub-contract from NAB to establish a Gopher server on the Internet to meet the needs of NWAC. The NWAC Gopher server served the needs of small and mid-sized businesses in the areas of workplace literacy, employee training, work restructuring, and labor-management relations.

Always attempting to serve service providers utilizing the most productive and most accessible technology available, the NWAC is now transferring the contents of the NWAC Gopher server to a World Wide Web Site. This will allow even greater access to service and information providers thought the world, thus achieving the NWAC's mission on a global scale.

The NWAC Web Site and the NWAC Gopher server both provide a repository of information for service providers in various settings, such as community colleges, adult basic and community education programs, manufacturing extension programs and centers, and workplace literacy providers. It encourages the sharing of information such as instructional strategies and materials, research findings, practical applications of research, program guides, staff training approaches, evaluation methods, reviews and critiques of materials produced by NWAC, as well as other related information.