Diane McKee from Howell Carnegie Library kindly gave permission for me to post these photos of Richard Douglass speaking at the Beginning Workshop in 1987.

This past week on the michlib-l listserv, it seems fitting – and a little ironic – that the posts were about either Richard Douglass or AV lending.  In the 1980’s, Richard Douglass was the driving force behind Michigan libraries buying videos to lend to their patrons. Hard to believe today but when videos first became …Read more »

I was pretty happy to hear President Barack Obama mention a public library in his speech this week.  He said, “I think about Ty’Sheoma Bethea, the young girl from that school I visited in Dillon, South Carolina — a place where the ceilings leak, the paint peels off the walls, and they have to stop …Read more »

Planning for the Preservation Conference is almost complete!  For a summary of where we are so far with the speakers line-up, see Kevin Driedger’s Library Preservation blog. Kevin will also be one of our speakers, talking about 2.0 and preservation. The conference will be held at the Kellogg Center in East Lansing on June 4-5, …Read more »

Online registration is now available for the Fifth Annual MeL Users Day 2009. To liven things up this year, we are introducing a new segment of Pecha Kucha presentations. Pecha Kucha — also known as “w00tSlam” or “Lightning Round” — is a presentation format based on the triad:  “Be brief! Be brilliant! Be gone!” In …Read more »

Yesterday I received a message from one of our members that started out: “I just found out today that OCLC will be terminating the agreement with MLC on June 30, 2009. There seems to be some “buzz” going around about this.” I wasn’t too surprised to hear about the “buzz” as there has been quite …Read more »

Press release posted on LIS Wire: Contact: Justine Shaffner, Plinkit Collaborative Coordinator jshaffner@bcr.org ; 800.397.1552 x140 February 12, 2009 – Plinkit, a multi-state collaborative that uses an uncomplicated template-based web site creation toolkit, is delighted to announce it has added a ninth organization as a member. The Library of Michigan has joined Colorado, Illinois, Oregon …Read more »

Click below for a GREAT story! Hero pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger of Danville is now every librarian’s hero, too.

The International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) has issued a new document, Statement on the Global Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Consortial Licenses. MLC has been active with ICOLC for many years and is one of the signatories to the statement. Libraries all around the world are feeling the pinch of the global financial …Read more »

An outside evaluation of MeL Delivery service was conducted from July – December 2008. The intent was to gather empirical data about how the system is functioning and where improvement can be made. Highlights of the study: * ProMed’s performance is substantially above industry standards of 95% for non-critical shipments. * The most significant improvement …Read more »