UBorrow—the new service that offers rapid access to over 90 million books from 13 research libraries—has won the Rethinking Resource Sharing 2012 Innovation Award.

David Larsen of the University of Chicago Library and Anne Beaubien of the University of Michigan accepted the award on behalf of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation—a consortium of Big Ten member universities plus the University of Chicago.  The award comes with a $1000 stipend and honors individuals or institutions for changes they have made to improve users’ access to information through resource sharing in their library, consortium, state or country.

The University of Iowa was one of 5 pilot libraries that tested and implemented UBorrow in late 2010/early 2011.  Amy Paulus, Head, Access Services at the Main Library worked closely with these libraries as a member of  the implementation team.

UBorrow allows University of Iowa faculty, students and staff to borrow books from other CIC institutions, which typically arrive on campus within a week and can be checked out for 12 weeks, with an option for a 4-week renewal. Visit the UBorrow Library Guide to learn more about using this service.