Louise Bugg Announces Retirement
Louise Bugg, MeLCat Project Coordinator since its inception, will retire at the end of this year. In a very real sense, Louise has been the mother of MeLCat. She nurtured the project at the beginning by serving on the committee that chose the INN-Reach software and by helping to negotiate the contract with Innovative Interfaces. As MeLCat began to grow, she worked with the committees to develop the policies that disciplined and shaped the service. And finally she helped push it out of the nest by training users and teaching others how to make best use of the software. It is because of Louise’s involvement and hard work that MeLCat is the success that it is today. For further information, see MLC's News & Announcements page.

Special Programs Scheduled for 2008
Mark your calendars for three MLC Special Programs!
Feb. 19, 2008: MeL Users Day
March 17, 2008: Teaching Technology in Libraries
April 15, 2008: Technical Services Conference

For further information and to register online for these Special Programs and other MLC Workshops, see MLC's January-June 2008 Workshop Schedule. MLC is offering 50 programs this semester on a variety of topics of interest to Michigan library staff.

MLC Second Life Seminars
MLC's December Second Life seminar is scheduled for December 6, 4pm SL time (7pm Michigan time) and will feature UD Mercy's digitization project display in SL. MLC's January Second Life seminar will focus on offering reference services in virtual worlds.

Michigan Evergreen Project Underway
MLC demonstrated Evergreen's open-source ILS software at the MLA Annual Conference in November. We are now in the process of selecting libraries for the 2008 pilot group.

For further information, see the Michigan Evergreen blog. MLC launched the Michigan Evergreen blog in October as a vehicle to update the library community on the progress of Michigan's open-source project.

MLC Board Elects New Officers
Incoming officers for MLC's 2008 Board are Pamela Grudzien as Chair, Ishwar Laxminarayan as Vice-Chair, and Richard Cochran as Secretary.

YBP added as WorldCat Selection partner
OCLC is pleased to announce that YBP Library Services has agreed to become a WorldCat Selection partner. YBP Library Services, founded in 1971, provides books and supporting collection management and technical services to academic, research and special libraries around the world. WorldCat Selection streamlines libraries' ordering processes and delivers corresponding MARC records. Libraries can order items from multiple vendors using one central, comprehensive interface.

For more information see MLC Communiqué. For a complete list of WorldCat Selection vendors, see OCLC's Selection web page.

Emerald Celebrates 50 Millionth Download
MLC vendor partner, Emerald, announced the 50 millionth full-text article download since the company first started collecting COUNTER-compliant statistics in 2002. For information on Emerald, see MLC's Emerald page.

3M Tattletapes Price Increase January 1
3M tattletapes are available through MLC's web page and order form. Libraries are encouraged to place orders in December because there will be a price increase on January 1, 2008.

To view back issues of News@MLC online, visit MLC's website at: http://mlcnet.org/cms/sitem.cfm/about/newsletters_lists_&_blogs/news_mlc/