Plan Ahead for Disruption of MeLCat Service

Many students and faculty take advantage of Hope’s participation in MeLCat, the virtual catalog that combines resources from more than 400 libraries throughout the state.  Books, CDs, and DVDs are requested daily through MeLCat and are then delivered to the requesting patron.  This service will not be available towards the end of the Fall Semester.  Beginning on Wednesday, November 18, no new MeLCat requests can be placed while the entire system is transferred to new servers.  This outage is planned to last through December 11.  So it will be unavailable the final 3 weeks of the semester, just when students are working on their final papers for various courses.  Please take this into account when assigning papers, and make sure students know to request items sooner rather than later.  Items can be requested right up through November 17 and will be delivered as usual. No requests can be placed through MeLCat from November 18 through December 11. Interlibrary loan will still be an option to request material, but it often takes longer for items to arrive due to various shipping methods used by other libraries.

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