Requesting Books via Borrow Direct

If a book you are looking for is not available from the Yale libraries, you can use the free "Borrow Direct" service of the Library to get it from another "Borrow Direct" participating library. Through Borrow Direct, you can search a combined catalog of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton, and Yale and request books not currently available at Yale.

Borrow Direct service has the following advantages:

• Borrow Direct is usually faster than regular interlibrary loan -- your book will normally be delivered within 4 business days;
• Borrow Direct does not care if Yale owns the book or not -- you can use Borrow Direct even if a book you want is at Yale but is checked out to someone else.

Accessing Borrow Direct

You can access the Borrow Direct service from the Medical Library home page. There is a link for "Request Materials" under "Services" in the left column of the page.

You can follow the steps on the next pages, but there is a convenient link for Borrow Direct on the right column under "Related Links".

On the next page, click on the "Borrow Direct" links.

Logging into Borrow Direct

You will be directed to the Yale CAS (Central Authentication Service) page. You can use your Yale NetID and password to log in to the service.

Searching Borrow Direct

This is the main search page for Borrow Direct. Just type in some keywords to search for the book you are looking for:

You can also use the Advanced Search page to specify search fields, search phrases, and boolean operators, etc.:

Placing Requests

If there are available copies of the book you are looking for in the Borrow Direct participating libraries, those copies will show up in the list below the search result.

Click on the title of the book you want to go to the record page:

You can then select a pickup location, and click on the "Request" button to submit the request.

What happens after you hit the request button?

After you place your request, an email message will be sent to you whenever your request status changes. You can also check the status of your request using the Borrow Direct system. Just click on the "My Account" link in the Borrow Direct home page.

Normally Borrow Direct books will be delivered within 4 business days. When you receive the email that tells you your book is available to pick up, you can pick it up in the Library Circulation Desk you chose when you placed the request.

After you pick up your book, it will also show up in your Library account in Orbis. The book is due in 6 weeks and you can use Orbis to renew it once.