The Dartmouth community’s access to research library resources through the BorrowDirect consortium increased dramatically October 1 as the 11 partner institutions and Duke University launched an on-site borrowing and access agreement. The Duke University library does not currently participate in BorrowDirect, but is a member of the group of libraries offering reciprocal on-site access.
Johns Hopkins University joined BorrowDirect earlier this summer, becoming the 11th member of the resource-sharing consortium. BorrowDirect offers faculty, students, and staff at all partner institutions unmediated requesting and expedited delivery of items from a combined collection of more than 50 million volumes and an integrated online search and discovery interface. Since its inception in 1999, BorrowDirect has successfully filled almost 2 million user requests with book delivery within three to five days.
“We are delighted to have Johns Hopkins University as a member of BorrowDirect, adding their strong research collections to the overall partnership,” says Jeffrey Horrell, Dean of Libraries and Librarian of the College. “In addition, we are very excited about the new on-site borrowing and access agreement providing added convenience for our users.”
Under this new agreement, called BorrowDirect Plus, Dartmouth students, faculty, and staff will have free on-site access to the partner libraries as well as the ability to borrow directly from those libraries, according to Dave Sturges, the Dartmouth library’s head of Access and Delivery Services. (Items, collections, and participating libraries available will vary by institution. The lending library’s policies and loan periods apply to Borrow Direct Plus borrowers. It is recommended that individuals considering a visit to another library to view that library’s policies ahead of time.)
“This is an a extraordinary opportunity to expand on the success of the BorrowDirect partnership by providing direct access to the collections of our partner libraries. Dartmouth library users will now have access to the same rich collections while traveling, home for breaks, or on an off-campus term,” says Sturges.
BorrowDirect was established as the joint project of three Ivy League libraries and has grown to include Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth (which joined in 2002, part of the group’s first expansion beyond its founding trio), Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and now Johns Hopkins University.
