The Harvard Library and the MIT Libraries have joined Borrow Direct, a patron-initiated rapid book request and delivery system.
The libraries of Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University are pleased to announce the expansion of Borrow Direct to include the Harvard Library and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Libraries as full partners with services to begin in 2011.
Borrow Direct is an expedited delivery system for books (primarily monographs) between and among the participating libraries. It provides access to and sharing of a collection of nearly 50 million items across the partnership. Faculty, students, and staff of Borrow Direct institutions can request circulating materials directly from the library where they are held, without the need for library staff to intervene in the process. The materials are then delivered to the borrowing patron’s library via commercial courier services within several business days. Borrow Direct has successfully shared approximately 1 million items across the partnership since it was initiated in 1999.
“My colleagues at the Borrow Direct libraries and I warmly welcome Harvard and MIT as full participants in the program,” says Jeffrey Horrell, Dean of Libraries at Dartmouth and chair of the partnership’s directors group. “Each of these important institutions will contribute and benefit greatly by our collaboration. Together, Harvard and MIT add nearly 20 million monographs to the partnership,” he notes. “Access to the expanded range and depth of collections in Borrow Direct will support all of our users, and ultimately scholarship as a whole.”
“This is a significant step in collaboration for Harvard,” said Helen Shenton, Executive Director of the Harvard Library. “We are delighted to be joining forces with our peers in order to provide a better, deeper, and richer service for all of our patrons.”
“The strength of the combined collections of the outstanding libraries represented in Borrow Direct will be a tremendous asset to our community and to library users across the cooperative,” says Ann Wolpert, MIT’s Director of Libraries. “We are pleased to be able to join our peers in contributing to the significant depth of this valuable service.” MIT Libraries’ extensive collections in science, math, and engineering, as well as rich specialized collections in a variety of other subjects, will be accessible through Borrow Direct.
For further information about Borrow Direct, contact Peter Kosewski at Harvard; Heather Denny at MIT; Peter Collins or Robert Krall at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, who oversee the operations of Borrow Direct for the partnership; or the administrative offices at other Borrow Direct partner libraries.
Peter Kosewski Director, Publications and Communications, Harvard Library (617) 495-7793peter_kosewski@harvard.edu
Heather Denny Communications Officer, MIT Libraries (617) 253-05686hdenny@mit.edu
Peter Collins IT Project Leader, University of Pennsylvania Libraries (215) 746-4156pcoll@pobox.upenn.edu
Robert Krall Director, Departmental Libraries, Resource Sharing & Delivery Services, University of Pennsylvania Libraries (215) 573-3626krallrw@pobox.upenn.edu
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