Canadian universities’ resource sharing agreement extends from coast to coast

Toronto, Ontario: Effective January 2, 2008, Canadian university faculty, students and staff will now be supported by one Resource Sharing Agreement amongst institutions. The new agreement will extend standardized reciprocal interlibrary loan / document delivery privileges across Canada. The agreement includes:

- loan of books between participating universities at no charge
- four day turnaround time from receipt of the request to the date the item is sent
- three week loan period for books and other material that has to be returned to the supplying library
- a standard charge for provision of photocopied articles and other material that does not need to be returned to the supplying library

As a basic principle, all parties have agreed to exhaust local resource sharing opportunities before borrowing from each other.

The four signatories are Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries (COPPUL), Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL), Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universities du Québec (CREPUQ), and Council of Atlantic University Libraries / Conseil des bibliothèque universitaires de l’Atlantique.

This agreement builds on the past collaborative success of these four regional library consortia. Since May 2002 most Canadian universities have supported a reciprocal borrowing agreement to extend university-level library resources across the country, enabling in-person borrowing on the part of faculty, students and staff at participating institutions.

“This resource sharing agreement reflects the commitment of university libraries in creating the best possible educational opportunities and advancing Canada’s research and innovation agenda. Successful researchers tend to be intensive readers. Yet, no single university can provide all the materials required by their faculty and students. Thus the success of Canadian research is heightened by the collaborative efforts of university libraries to supply requested resources.” (Cynthia Archer, University Librarian York University and Chair of OCUL)