Carla Moyer, Circulation Coordinator in the library, has lived through an upheaval in the past three months since the Hekman Library joined MeLCat. MeLCat is a shared, state-wide catalog of more than 400 participating libraries. Nearly all the major research universities and private colleges in Michigan are participants. What has this meant for our Circulation Department and for Carla, who trains the majority of the library's student workers?

It has meant a deluge of books coming into and going out of the Circulation Department every day.  Some statistics:

• Calvin is (so far) a net lender - 2 to 1. So, for every book our people request, we get 2 requests from other MeLCat patrons.
• We receive in the delivery system an average of 150-160 books per day for the Calvin community.
• Our patrons can keep MeLCat books for 3 weeks with 1 renewal - a total of 6 weeks.
• Since we do not lend our AV materials we cannot request them for our patrons.
• Hekman library books that go out to other libraries are not open for "recall."
• We have not implemented the "visiting patron" feature. This means that our patrons cannot visit another MeLCat library and checkout materials on site.

Give MeLCat a try!  Perhaps you've noticed that when you do a search in our library catalog, halfway down the page you will see the message: "Discover more sources using MeLCat." We've made it very easy for you!