MEL: A Gardener's Perspective.(Michigan Electric Library)(Brief Article)

IMAGINE A WEB CATALOG that includes only high-quality sites--the kind that would help a student working on a term paper, or a public library patron with a specific query. Suppose this catalog were free of advertising or subscription fees. And imagine that a team of librarian subject specialists chooses every site in the collection.

Meet MEL, the Michigan Electronic Library. MEL's roots date to 1992, when the University of Michigan launched a Gopher-based catalog called Go-Mlink. Sue Davidsen, Go-Mlink progenitor, calls it she first Internet virtual library. Davidsen remembers the time in 1994 when Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang called her, asking if she thought a subject guide to the web could become commercial.

Today, Yahoo is the most successful commercial catalog on the web. MEL took a different course. Working with the Library of Michigan, Davidsen …