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Borrow Direct Collaboration Expands

NEW YORK, January 30, 2011 –

Two new partners, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have joined Borrow Direct, a service enabling faculty, students, and staff of Columbia University to borrow books and music scores directly from the libraries of Brown University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University.


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Beginning in summer 2011, faculty, students, and staff from Columbia and the six partner institutions will also have access to regularly circulating materials from Harvard and MIT. This expansion increases the number of volumes available to Columbia scholars from more than 45 million to almost 70 million.

Borrow Direct is a rapid request and delivery system for books (primarily monographs) between and among the participating libraries. 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, normally within four business days. Borrow Direct has successfully shared approximately 1 million items across the partnership since it was initiated in 1999.

Borrow Direct is an extremely popular library service, with more than 30,000 requests filled for Columbia faculty, students, and staff and more than 19,000 Columbia books lent to partner libraries in 2010.

For questions about using Borrow Direct, visit the Libraries' Borrow Direct Information Page.

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services is one of the top five academic research library systems in North America. The collections include over 10 million volumes, over 100,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms, maps, graphic and audio-visual materials. The services and collections are organized into 22 libraries and various academic technology centers. The Libraries employs more than 550 professional and support staff. The website of the Libraries is the gateway to its services and resources: http://library.columbia.edu

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01/31/11

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