Melcat

O.k. as of today Melcat is officially live. This means the rest of Michigan can now place holds on our items as well as us being able to place holds on their items.

We are NOT advertising melcat to the patron's in any way. It will not be on the webpage or ibistro. Please do not say "I'm gettting your item from Melcat". If need, just say you're going to try to get the item outside of the cooperative, so it will take longer, etc.

Some things to remember about Melcat:
1. Always start with Sirsi. If you can place a hold in Sirsi, then you should NOT be placing the hold in Melcat.

2. Melcat is not a hold system. You can only place a request in Melcat if a copy shows available in at least one library. If you can not place the hold in Sirsi or the request in Melcat, only then can you place the request in OCLC.

3. Melcat treats us as an individual library. This means the patron MUST have a CHE library card in order to get a Melcat through CHE library. You can help a patron with a different library card if you want, but that request will go to their home library (the library their card was issued from).

4. Melcat is not "live" with our patron/item data. Each night after the last library closes Sirsi pulls our patron and item data and "drops" it onto the Melcat server. So any activity on an SLC item or patron today, won't show until tomorrow on melcat. So, if a patron had a NBL card and you explained to them their request would have to go to NBL, and they said, well then I just want to switch to a CHE card, they can do this, however, their request still can't be placed to be picked up at CHE until the next business day.

5. This part we are not 100 percent sure about yet, but we THINK if the patron has anything "wrong" with their record the Melcat system will not let them place the request. They can not have any overdues (even 10 cents). I'll reblog when I find out defintively about this. If this is true, even if the patron pays the fines right then, it will take 24 hours for their record to clear with Melcat.

We expect information on Melcat to change as we actually start to use the system, so just be patient and we'll all get through this together.