Administered by the Library of Michigan in partnership with Michigan's libraries of all types, the Michigan eLibrary (http://mel.org) will provide all Michigan residents with free access to online full-text articles, full-text books, digital images, and other valuable research information at any time via the Internet; and provide an easy-to-use interlibrary loan system to allow Michigan residents to borrow books and other library materials for free from participating Michigan libraries.

MeL is the Michigan eLibrary, a 24/7 online library for Michigan residents.

• MeL Databases allow you instant access to full-text articles from tens of thousands of magazines and newspapers. Databases are available for kids, adults, and on specialized topics such as car repair, practice tests and art images.
  
  
• MeLCat allows you to order books, audio books, music, movies and other materials and have them delivered to your participating library.
  
  
• MeL Michigana contains photographs, diaries, oral histories, local records and historical Michigan data.
  
  
• MeL Gateways include specialized resources such as those in genealogy, health, business and areas for kids and teens.
  
  
• MORE: Michigan Online Resources for Educators allows teachers and parents to find lesson plans and curriculum aids searchable by subject and aligned to state standards.
  
  

MeL is a project of the Library of Michigan, an agency of the Department of History, Arts and Libraries. The Library of Michigan contracts with the Michigan Library Consortium and partners with a number of Michigan organizations and institutions to provide the MeL service.

The Michigan eLibrary has grown from the combination of several statewide projects. The original projects were:

• Michigan Electronic Library, a collection of Internet resources selected by librarians (1992)
  
  
• AccessMichigan, a project to provide licensed commercial databases to Michigan's libraries (1997)
  
  
• ATLAS, the Action Team for Advancement of Libraries Statewide (1999-2002) which culminated in MeLCat, a statewide patron-initiated interlibrary loan system (2005)
  
  
• The Making of Modern Michigan, a statewide digitization effort to empower a wide range of Michigan libraries to preserve Michigan history, was realized in MeL Michigana (2007)
  
  
• MORE: Michigan Online Resources for Educators is a project that provides free lesson plans aligned to state standards and was created in alliance with the Michigan Department of Education and Wayne State University (2008)
  
  

This service is funded by the Federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) via the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through the Library of Michigan. The cost of MeL is approximately $5 million per year with a savings to the state's libraries, schools, colleges and universities of over $72 million per year.

The MeL Gateways and MORE are powered by the Internet Scout Project tool CWIS (Collection Workflow Integration Systems).