It’s hard to believe but MeLCat is now 13 years old! The first successful patron request was placed on January 10, 2005 at 12:41pm when a West Bloomfield patron requested Alice Starmore’s “The Celtic collection: Twenty-five knitwear designs for men and women” from Bloomfield Township Public Library.
There were a number of key milestones in MeLCat’s prehistory – the formation of the Michigan Electronic Library (1995), birth of AccessMichigan (1997), Our Preferred Future Conference for Libraries (1999), the creation of ATLAS (2001), and the subsequent release of Leveling the Playing Field 2: Creating a Statewide Resource Sharing Service (Final Report of the Action Team for Library Advancement Statewide, 2002).
From those early dreams, MeLCat was born.
The success of MeLCat is a testament to the power of all types and sizes of libraries working together to build a service that benefits Michigan residents statewide. A hearty congratulations to all MeLCat member libraries!
Since that day 13 years ago:
- over 430 libraries have joined
- patrons have made over 11 million requests
- the annual fill rate has reached 91.9%
None of that would be possible without the hard work of hundreds of library staff across the state. Everyone contributes.
We’ve seen items go between the far corners of the state . . . from Ironwood Carnegie Library to Monroe County Library System’s Luna Pier branch, from the Blissfield branch of Schultz-Holmes Memorial Library to Calumet Public School, from Three Oaks Township Public Library to Bayliss Public Library, and from Pickford Community Library to Reading Community Library.
We expect to see the large public and academic libraries lending to the smaller libraries; they just have bigger collections. But a surprising amount of material has been lent by small K12 libraries to the largest public and academic libraries.
Everyone contributes.
The MCLS MeLCat staff thanks every one of you for making MeLCat the success that it is.
Happy birthday to us all.
Megan Dudek
MeL Catalog Training & Support Librarian
Midwest Collaborative for Library Services (MCLS)
(800) 530-9019 ext 153
Source : MCLS News, January 2015; MCLS post of Michpub-l, January 10, 2018.