Uborrow, a new service that enables Penn State students, faculty and staff to directly search and request for materials from other major research libraries, has won the Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative 2012 Innovation Award. Uborrow simultaneously searches the library catalogs of all Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) members -- the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago -- and the Center for Research Libraries. Together, these collections contain approximately 90 million volumes. Penn State users can place requests within Uborrow that go directly to another library, which speeds up and streamlines the process for obtaining materials outside of Penn State.
The award was presented to the CIC for its efforts in improving users' access to information through resource sharing, during the Rethinking Resource Sharing Policies Committee Program at the American Library Association Annual Conference in Anaheim, Calif., on June 24. Penn State was one of six CIC pilot libraries testing and implementing the Uborrow service beginning in April 2011. The service is now fully implemented. “Uborrow is unique because we collaborated with two vendors on the development of this new service, melding the best features of each product to improve and streamline interlibrary loan service," said Barbara Coopey, assistant head of Access Services.
A link to Uborrow can be found on the Penn State Libraries' Interlibrary Loan page http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/ill.html, or directly at http://resources.libraries.psu.edu/eresources/PSU01687. For more information on Uborrow, contact Coopey at 814-863-1367 or bmc4@psu.edu.