Hold It Right There! (or here!)

Did you know there are three different ways to place a hold at the Warren Public Libraries?

1: Placing a hold at a Suburban Library Cooperative Library (all libraries in Macomb County, City of Troy, and City of Harper Woods).

· Look up the item you’d like to hold (or ask your reference librarian to help you do this).

· Place a hold through our catalog with your library card number and PIN.

· The hold will be sent to your home library in 3-5 business days, free of charge. A computerized system will call your phone number and notify you that it has arrived. Ask your librarian where to find it, and check out!

2: Placing a MeLCat Hold. (Michigan-wide, including some university libraries.)

· Look up the item you’d like to hold at http://elibrary.mel.org/search. (Please be sure to check the library cooperative FIRST to make sure we don’t have what you’re looking for!)

· Place a hold through MeL by clicking “Get this for me!” and entering your name and library card number.

· The hold will be sent to your home library, usually in about a week to 10 days. A librarian will call you and notify you that it has arrived. Ask your librarian where to find it and check out!

3: Placing an ILL/WorldCat request. (Outside of Michigan.)

· Look up the item in Worldcat, using the “Magazine and Online Databases” link on our library computers, or through the First Search link on our webpage.

· Place a hold with your librarian.

· The hold will be sent to your home library, sometimes in a week, sometimes in much longer (depending on where the item is being shipped from!) A librarian will call you and notify you that it has arrived. Ask your librarian where to find it and check out! (There is a $1 charge for each item shipped in.)

A few notes on holds:

** If you call a Warren Public Library and ask for a book that is currently checked in to be held, we will put your name on the book and hold it behind the Circulation Desk. You have 24 hours to come and pick it up before it is reshelved. Keep in mind we cannot do this if the book is not checked in at the library you are calling, or if it is not at a Warren library.

** Renewals work differently for all three systems.

- For an SLC book, you can renew an item once for three weeks, as long as no one else has a hold on that book. If they do, you must return it and reorder it at a later date.

- For a MeLCat book, you need to call or visit your library and ask them to renew the book. It MUST be renewed both through the SLC Catalog AND by logging into MeLCat. There is no guarantee that these can be renewed.

- For an ILL/WorldCat book, we need to be contacted *at least* one week before the book is due so that we can contact the owning library for permission to renew. There is also no guarantee that these can be renewed; the more notice we have, the better.