Borrow Direct is an interlibrary loan service that allows member university students, faculty, and staff with library borrowing privileges and active e-mail accounts to borrow books directly from the libraries of the other member universities. The patrons' home library bears the cost of the service and there is no charge to patrons. The service began within and slowly spread to all the members of the Ivy League, and has expanded since 2011 with the inclusion of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to non-Ivy (often so-called "Ivy Plus") institutions.[1]

Patrons may request monographs, microfilm, compact discs, and digital video discs, but no other print materials (such as journals or archives) or non-print media (such as ebooks). The Borrow Direct system will not allow patrons to place requests for items that the library believes to be available for checkout locally. Items requested are normally delivered within four business days after the request is placed, with an initial loan period of six weeks, with one renewal. Items may be recalled by the owning library at any time.[2]

History

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Borrow Direct went live in fall 1999 after a four-year planning and development period during which the three founding institutions, Columbia, Penn, and Yale, collaborated with the Research Libraries Group (RLG) for project management and assessment. Borrow Direct expanded to seven member libraries in 2002 with the addition of Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Princeton. In 2004, Borrow Direct exceeded 100,000 transactions for the first time. Borrow Direct grew to include Harvard and MIT in 2011. The University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, and Stanford University joined Borrow Direct in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2017, respectively.[3][4] Since its inception, Borrow Direct has successfully filled over 1.8 million user requests.[5]

Participating institutions

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Institution Location First Participating Year Library Holdings (Titles, millions) (2017) [6]
Brown University Providence, Rhode Island 2002 4.8
Columbia University New York, New York 1999 9.8
Cornell University Ithaca, New York 2002 8.0
Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire 2002 3.0
Duke University Durham, North Carolina 2015 8.2
Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts 2011 15.2
Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland 2014 5.2
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts 2011 2.5
Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey 2002 8.0
Stanford University Stanford, California 2017
University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois 2013 7.6
University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1999 6.4
Yale University[2] New Haven, Connecticut 1999 11.7

References

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  1. ^ "BorrowDirect".
  2. ^ a b "Yale University Library Research Guides: Get it @ Yale: Borrow Direct".
  3. ^ "Library cooperative programs". Stanford Libraries. Retrieved 2017-07-23.
  4. ^ "Duke Press Release". BorrowDirect. Retrieved 2015-04-25.
  5. ^ "Overview and History". Borrowdirect. Archived from the original on April 28, 2015. Retrieved June 5, 2022.
  6. ^ Morris, Shaneka; Roebuck, Gary (2019). "ARL Statistics 2016-2017". ARL Statistics. pp. 40–57. doi:10.29242/stats.2016-2017. ISBN 9781948964043. S2CID 67898129.
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