“In 2009, Dartmouth Library, one of the two smallest libraries participating in BD, was the biggest lender,” Associate Librarian of Collection Management for Harvard College Library Marilyn Wood wrote in a statement.

“That indicates that the size of the collection doesn’t necessarily predict the demand,” wrote Wood, who will manage the Borrow Direct project.

The Yale University Library, now the second largest library in the consortium, borrowed 30,763 volumes and loaned 20,633 in the 2010 fiscal year, according to Yale Associate University Librarian Kendall Crilly, who manages Yale’s Borrow Direct program.

Like Dartmouth College’s library, Brown University Library—one of the smaller library systems—has been a net lender.

But still, “Our faculty and students have been very happy with Borrow Direct and have come to rely on it,” Brown University Head of Circulation and Resource Sharing Bart Hollingsworth said.

Harvard has looked to partner with Borrow Direct for a number of years, according to Executive Director of the Harvard University Library Helen Shenton.

According to Director of MIT Libraries Ann J. Wolpert—who worked at the Harvard Business School Library in the 1990s—until last summer, Harvard did not have the technological infrastructure to support the software platform that Borrow Direct used.

—Staff writer Gautam S. Kumar can be reached at gkumar@college.harvard.edu.