Bessemer Public Library offers intra-library loan

By IAN MINIELLY

[email protected]

Bessemer — The intra-library loan system available through the Bessemer Public Library provides access to 4.5 million items from across Michigan to residents in Bessemer, Bessemer Township and Ironwood Township.

Residents of other towns and townships have to rely on their own libraries because of funding requirements for each library.

Melissa Lupino, librarian, said they use two different resources to locate and bring books to the Bessemer Public Library:

—The Resource Sharing Library system connects most of the libraries of the Upper Peninsula and some of the libraries of the northern lower peninsula for the sharing of available material.

—The MELCAT system ties in with libraries of the entire state to make accessible all resources right in Bessemer.

Lupino said it usually takes about a week for a book to get to Bessemer, once ordered.

She said most people do not even know they are using the intra-library loan system because they ask her about a book and she places the order and it arrives in a week, no questions asked.

For the enterprising soul who wants to scour the dusty stacks of books statewide and even the different university collections, both systems are accessible from the internet at home through the Bessemer Public Library portal. To use the system, an individual must be a number-carrying member with the library. Lupino said they no longer issue library cards, but now issue numbers.

Asked what the most obscure book she has been involved in securing through inter-library loan, Lupino said she found one customer an old German genealogy manuscript in a university’s archives, written in German. It was shipped to Bessemer.

Lupino said a customer can keep a book for two weeks and if there is not a demand for the book, they can renew the book three times for a total of eight weeks.