Like many other institutions, Cornell University participates in an interlibrary loan system for faculty, staff and students.
Borrow Direct (borrowdirect.org) went live in 1999 after founding institutions Columbia, Penn and Yale partnered with the Research Libraries Group to develop the program for “Ivy Plus” institutions.
Besides the three initial universities and Cornell, participants are Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Duke, Princeton and Stanford.
Link to main story: Colleges open libraries to neighboring students
Library users can search a catalog of approximately 70 million volumes and request materials for delivery within three to five days.
Real-time shelf status and a system algorithm ensure that requests are distributed evenly across the partnership.
