Harvard, MIT to join Borrow Direct

Harvard libraries’ collection consists of over 16 million items. The MIT library collection contains three million printed texts and 3.1 million non-printed items. However, not all MIT and Harvard library items will be made available through Borrow Direct.

“I think it is wonderful that Harvard and MIT have decided to join the Borrow Direct partnership,” Trevor Dawes, circulation services director for the Princeton University Library said in an e-mail.

“The addition of the collections from these two libraries greatly expands the number of volumes that are available to be requested, not only by Princeton students, faculty and staff, but by the affiliates of all the partner institutions,” he added.

The decision for Harvard and MIT to join the partnership is the result of a yearlong discussion with the schools, though both schools had been invited to join almost 10 years ago.

“The Borrow Direct partnership is an invaluable program that Harvard has considered with care over time,” said Peter Kosewski, director of publications and communications for the Harvard University Library.

According to a 2009 Harvard task force report, overhead costs prohibited by the library’s prior financial model prevented the school from joining the partnership earlier. The only feasible way to join the partnership was a restructuring of library costs, the report said.

“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,” Ann Wolpert, director of libraries for MIT, said in a recent article posted on Dartmouth Now. “We are pleased to be able to join our peers in contributing to the significant depth of this valuable service.” Wolpert was unavailable for additional comment.

Available technology also previously limited the schools’ ability to join the partnership. According to Dawes, however, the Borrow Direct software was recently changed.

“We wanted to ensure, among other things, the new system’s stability before expanding the partnership,” he noted.

The new software will allow the system to better handle the additional circulating material brought on by MIT and Harvard’s collections.

“With a new, centralized organization in place for our disparate libraries and with enhancements to library technology continuing, Harvard is delighted to take its place among the peer institutions that form Borrow Direct,” Kosewski said.

Started in 1999, Borrow Direct allows students access to an interlibrary borrowing and lending system. Materials that can be requested include books and music scores either not owned by Princeton or unavailable to be checked out. Patrons receive their requested material within five business days and can keep them for a six-week period.