Harvard Library joins Borrow Direct

In a move that will allow Harvard students, faculty, and staff to borrow circulating materials from the libraries of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale, the Harvard Library has joined the Borrow Direct Partnership. When fully implemented at Harvard, Borrow Direct will enable users to search a combined Borrow Direct catalog of more than 50 million volumes at all nine participating institutions and to request prompt delivery of circulating items.

“With thousands of new titles entering circulation every year, we must develop alliances with other libraries and cultural institutions to ensure full access for Harvard’s patrons to the world’s scholarly resources,” Provost Steven E. Hyman recently noted. “Harvard’s participation in Borrow Direct is a strategic alliance among our peers that will benefit users at Harvard and at each of our partner institutions.”

Entering the network reinforces the University’s commitment to ensuring that students and faculty members have full access to scholarly materials as it restructures the library system in response to a rapidly changing technological and intellectual landscape.

“This is a significant step in collaboration for Harvard,” said Helen Shenton, executive director of the new 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.”

When integration begins during the summer of 2011, members of the Harvard community, using their current IDs, PINs, and established library privileges, will be able to request Borrow Direct titles online. Borrowers will receive titles within four business days.

“Borrow Direct will provide our users with seamless, personalized access to holdings in a key group of the greatest research libraries in the U.S.,” Shenton said. “Borrow Direct strongly reflects the aspirations that guide the new Harvard Library. We are certain that Borrow Direct will prove to be a strategic asset for all Harvard researchers.”