MeLCat went live on January 10, 2005 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.

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