Still in demand after 20 years ANN ARBOR—When they need it and need it now, businesses requiring copies of articles and documents rely on the services provided by MITS—the Michigan Information Transfer Source at the University of Michigan. For the past 20 years, MITS has supplied articles ranging from topics on “how humidity affects injection molding” to “lists of the major competitors in Southeast Asia.” And these are just a sampling of the more than 234,000 inquiries received by MITS over the years.

A fee-based information retrieval service in U-M’s University Library, MITS provides articles, books, conference papers, technical reports, patents, government documents, maps, abstracts, dissertations and other crucial materials that assist businesses in their day-to-day decision making processes.

As a department of University Library, one of the largest academic research libraries in the United States, MITS has direct access to the Library’s collections including its 7 million volumes; more than 100,000 journal and periodical titles; over 3,000 annual reports; 10,000 corporate reports; federal, state and foreign government documents; and a variety of other information resources.

“Businesses from around the country request materials; our skilled information professionals locate what is needed; and we then deliver it to the work place as quickly as three hours from the time of the request,” says Anne Beaubien, executive director of MITS. “Some businesses choose to build their own libraries. Others see the profitability of using our services in addition to their own. Because we have vast resources available and talented staff to retrieve the information requested, we can quickly and accurately respond to the requests.”

With easy access to a rich collection in subject areas such as medicine, engineering, biology, chemistry, natural resources, the automotive industry and much more, MITS offers next-day rush, same-day rush, and three-hour rush delivery. The articles can be delivered by express courier, U.S. Mail, fax, or directly to a secured Web site. Those who elect to receive documents via the Web may receive them even faster than by an expedited courier. There is also no additional charge for the Web service.

Mike Reilly, attorney of the Hourigan Kluger & Quinn Law Firm in Pennsylvania and a frequent user of the MITS services noted, “Samuel Johnson once stated that ‘Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information about it.’ Over the past decade I have personally come to view MITS as an invaluable and trustworthy key to unlocking the door to the universe of information.”

In its 20 years of service filling requests, MITS staffers have walked a distance equal to 3.2 times around the earth; through 65 feet of snow; through 640 inches of rain; filled more than 35,000 “RUSH” requests; and said “Thank you for calling MITS” 234,000 times.

For more information about the services provided by MITS, access the Web at http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/services/mits/index.html or call (734) 763-5060.

Michigan Information Transfer SourceUniversity Libraryhttp://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/services/mits/index.html