In 1999, a meeting was convened with the purpose of finding out what Michigan libraries wanted. The Michigan library community responded with an idea for statewide resource sharing.

The Pilot Project

MeLCat was preceded by a pilot project at Michigan State University. The university received federal demonstration grant money from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), awarded by the Library of Michigan, to establish the feasibility of statewide resource sharing in Michigan.

The pilot program, called InMich, went live in November of 2000 with 6 participating libraries:

• Albion College
• Albion Public Library
• Grand Rapids Community College
• Michigan State University
• Ovid-Elsie Area Schools
• Southfield Public Library.

One goal of the pilot project was to determine whether a multitype resource sharing system was feasible. There were several statewide programs around the country, and the world, but at that time none of them incorporated different types of libraries.

The other issue that needed addressing was how to let libraries that used different kinds of local systems share in MeLCat. Innovative Interfaces, Inc. (III), the vendor supplying the software, came up with the Direct Consortial Borrowing (DCB) server/client model. By building one large physical union catalog users could search and place requests in one place quickly and easily.

The pilot project needed a library to test out and try the DCB model and East Lansing Public Library agreed to be the guinea pig. In June of 2001, they came live on the system.

It was time to add more libraries to test whether this model was scalable.

In July 2002 - October 2003, 20 more libraries are added to the system

Over the course of 2002 - 2004, sixteen more libraries were added, including sites using 4 different kinds of local circulation systems.

After such a successful pilot, the Library of Michigan issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) to help launch a statewide resource sharing system that would include every library in the state that wanted to participate. III won the bid for that contract.

And MeLCat (the Michigan eLibrary Catalog) was officially born.

MeLCat

InMich was closed down in December of 2004 and MeLCat began with 21 libraries on January 10, 2005:

• Albion College
• Bayliss Public Library
• Bloomfield Township Public Library
• Capital Area District Library
• Central Michigan University Libraries
• Community District Library
• East Lansing Public Library
• Escanaba Public Library
• Grand Rapids Community College
• Holly Township Library
• Kalamazoo College
• Laingsburg Public Library
• Library of Michigan
• Michigan State University
• Ovid-Elsie Area Schools Information Center
• Peter White Public Library
• Shiawassee District Library
• Southfield Public Library
• University of Michigan - Dearborn
• Vernon District Library
• West Bloomfield Public Library

At that point 3,923 total requests had been sent through the system.

From then on, it was a matter of adding any library that wanted to participate in MeLCat and share their materials around the state. In order to accommodate the number of applicants, implementations were done in groups. From 2005 to 2010 there were 3 groups per year.

By the end of 2005, 52 libraries were live on MeLCat and requests had soared to a total of 87,548.

2006

MeLCat added 62 libraries.

2007

MeLCat added 90 libraries.

2008

On January 31, 2008 the number of total requests reached 741,041.

In June, MeLCat hit the 1,000,000th request. MeLCat was growing and successful.

MeLCat added 111 libraries.

2009

In March, the system hit 1.5 million total requests.

The total number of libraries live on MeLCat at the end of the year was 358.

2010

In December, the total number of libraries live on MeLCat reached 406.

MeLCat reached 1 million requests in a single calendar year! It was the first site using III software to do so.

2011

The total number of libraries live on MeLCat reached 415.

MeLCat reached 1 million requests in a single calendar year for the second year in a row in December.

MeLCat has been a hugely successful project, which gives countless Michigan residents access to information and entertainment they would not have otherwise. The dedicated staff at the 415 MeLCat libraries around Michigan are a testament to the shared vision to give the good people of Michigan excellent library service.

For a list of all the libraries currently participating in MeLCat, please view the Participating MeLCat Libraries page.

Source: MeLCat Wiki