[Michlib-l] Michigan Activity Pass: It's All Over the (Michigan) MAP!

[Jim Flury]

All,

Let's hear it for Calumet Public School Library, which as Michigan's most northerly public library, recorded its first ever MAP checkout yesterday. Two checkouts, actually. Yea for Calumet! Note to other Keweenaw Peninsula libraries, you've got some work to do! And speaking of the U.P., take a look/listen at what our friends at Escanaba Public Library have done, and promoted during a television interview: a workstation set up with MAP on it! How cool is that? 

http://abc10up.com/soar-explore-with-michigan-libraries/

As you are aware, statewide, online, expanded to include 230+ DNR destinations, MAP Year 3 went live on May 24. Today I am very pleased to share the news that thanks to the great promotional outreach of our sponsors, generosity of our partner venues (be sure to thank them when you have a chance), multiple late night sessions by our developer/programmer to fine tune the MAP software so as to get it exactly right for patrons, and a lot of hard work by the staff in Michigan's public libraries, you have circulated nearly one-third as many MAP passes in the first three weeks of MAP Year 3, as were checked out during the full 52 weeks of MAP Year 2! My colleague Brigette at TLN must have filled that MAP balloon with supercharged helium this year, because it is soaring out of sight! To that end, take a look at this MLive article that appeared in the June 10 Grand Rapids Press. In just 24 hours this article has generated over 12,000 shares on Facebook. Not bad for a library related piece, eh? 

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2015/06/michigan_activity_pass_gives_r.html

Elected officials are on board, too. Senate Appropriations committee chair Dave Hildenbrand is in the second photograph associated with the Grand Rapids Press article. Senator Jim Stamas, who is a strong advocate for libraries, attended a recent MAP press conference at the Alpena County Library.

Granted, we are less than three weeks out from go live. But based on the checkout numbers I am seeing, and the fact that checkouts are occurring at libraries that saw little or no MAP activity during the first two years (see Calumet), I think it is safe to say that MAP is well on its way to becoming the program we envisioned when we expanded from a paper-based, metro Detroit libraries in six counties with 30 destinations model, to an online, statewide in all 83 counties with 400 libraries in 640 buildings and 385 destinations (the reporter in the ABC10UP piece above said MAP has an "endless list" of destinations) program three years ago.

Thank you for your support and promotion of the Michigan Activity Pass program.

Sincerely,

Jim Flury

Jim Flury
Technical Services Manager
The Library Network
41365 Vincenti Court 
Novi, MI 48375
248-536-3100 x133 
Fax 248-536-3098 
jflury at tln.lib.mi.us