To increase academic library access to college students and staff regardless of where they live or attend school in New York State. AcademicSHARE member libraries minimally agree to allow on-site access and lend materials to any current college student, staff, and/or faculty member from another Empire State AcademicSHARE member library.

You can verify enrollment by watching them login to a course page or their college portal. To verify an address, you can ask for a second form of ID, such as a driver’s license.

This is entirely up to you. You can record the home institution if you think it will help you find delinquent borrowers. Depending upon the type of ILS that you have, you can also set up a separate borrower type for Academic Share borrowers, so that you can track them more readily.

The relationship is between you and the borrower, not you and the home institution. Reimbursement should not be expected. However, you can expect, to a degree, cooperation from the home institution in locating delinquent patrons.  Consider limiting checkouts to a lower number if this is a concern. An advisory group is being formed to evaluate issues like this that may arise.

Items would be returned to the library from which they are borrowed. (Of  course, items will be mailed to the lending library if mistakenly returned to the home library.)

This is determined by your own guest policies. However, a general expectation is that  users would at least have access to services that support academic work, such as being able to log into computers, access databases (as allowed by your licenses),  and study in the building. The amount of time that you can dedicate to reference services will be determined by your guest policies.

No, AcademicShare borrowers should contact their home library for all interlibrary loan services.

Contact the Executive Director of the Library Council you belong to. A list of the councils and director contact information is available here.