Guitarists refer to the location of their fretting hand on the instrument's neck as "position". The number used to define a steel guitarist's position at a given time is the number of the fret marker that they are using to position their bar over the correct point along the string. For example, when a steel guitarist holds his bar against the strings above the 12th fret marker, they are in 12th position. Each position marker will raise the available pitches by one semitone.
As a guitarist moves their hand (or slide bar) up the neck of his instrument, new notes become available that weren't available in lower positions. If he continues to move up the neck, he will eventually run into notes that were available on the higher strings when he was in lower positions. Though it is partly responsible for the complexity of the guitar (particularly the steel guitar), this phenomenon also gives the player a wide range of choices when deciding where on the neck to play a given passage. Knowlege of the difference in tone from one string to the next enables a player to make decisions that are appropriate for whatever musical context may be at hand.
Since neck position is so crucial to a guitarist's palette, we made sure to sample the entire range of the neck (24 frets, plus "open" position) on every string of the pedal steel, and then programmed the instrument such that it can be controlled in realtime to access samples taken from anywhere on any string. It's just a part of what makes this the most playable pedal steel library in existence.