Olin & Uris Libraries

The Olin & Uris Access Services Department provides information service and assistance to users at the Olin or Uris circulation desks. Library users may check out and return library materials, including Borrow Direct and Interlibrary Loan items, at the two circulation desks. Course reserves for humanities, social sciences, Asian studies and other disciplines are processed and available at the Uris Library circulation desk.

Other services managed by access services staff include the assignment of faculty research spaces, graduate and undergraduate carrels and lockers, book delivery services to faculty offices, electronic document delivery, Library billing, faculty/staff proxy authorizations, guest borrower services, and disability services. In addition, the access staff is responsible for opening and closing the libraries and monitoring adherence to library rules to ensure the general safety and security of patrons, staff, collections and the buildings.

Stacks Maintenance

Each day, we receive and shelve new acquisitions, circulation returns, and browsed material. Our turnaround time from receipt to shelf is twenty-four hours. We also trace missing items and are constantly shifting and moving materials. This keeps the stacks neat and orderly, thereby providing a scholarly environment for research. We do this on the twenty-two floors that house the millions of books and other formats in Olin, Kroch Asia and Uris Libraries. Some specialty areas we service include the New and Noteworthy bookshelves, special collections in the Graduate Study Rooms, and the Reference Collection. During shelving, staff members are observant of call number inaccuracies, items suitable for scrutiny by the Rare Book Department staff, items needing conservation treatment, guide card, and range label changes.

Serials Maintenance

We shelve and shift serial titles in the stacks and create and update online records for serial titles in Olin, Kroch Asia, and Uris Libraries. We send items pulled from the stacks for conservation treatment. This includes sending material for commercial binding, in-house pamphlet binding, stiffening, photo duplication of missing pages and articles, and recycling items replaced by other formats. We resolve or refer record problems on a regular basis to Access Services, Library Technical Services, Reference, and Conservation. Staff members create greyboards for current material, back issues awaiting a claimed issue, newsprint, and unbindable material.

The showcase of the Serials unit is the Current Periodicals and Newspapers Reading Room (Olin Library 101), which we maintain as a quiet research area. It contains selected titles that represent the most popular scholarly titles of the Olin and Uris Library Collection

Contact Information

• Olin Circulation Desk: libpublicservices@cornell.edu, (607) 255-4245
• Library Public Services Office: for information about loan and usage policies, billing, carrels, faculty research spaces, lockers, guest and alumni borrowing and access, proxy authorization, disability services and general information: libpublicservices@cornell.edu, (607) 255-5069
• Olin/Kroch/Uris Course Reserves: okureserve@cornell.edu, (607) 255-1882
• Access Services Librarian for Olin/Kroch and Uris Libraries: Wendy Wilcox, (607) 254-6241

Mailing books back

If you are out of town and need to return an item by mail, please insure the package for $100 per book and include your name, address, phone or email address.

Library Public Services Office
116 Olin Library
161 Ho Plaza
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853

The Interlibrary Services Department in Olin Library provides the Interlibrary Loan and Borrow Direct services to local users, as well as libraries, institutions, and individual researchers outside Cornell. The Interlibrary Services office is located in the lower level of Olin Library.

Interlibrary Loan is a service for Cornell faculty, staff and registered students. Interlibrary Loan allows Cornell Library users to borrow physical material from other libraries and universities, as well as obtain copies of articles or chapters from titles that are not held by Cornell University Library.

Borrow Direct is a rapid book request and delivery system. It enables Cornell faculty, staff and students to search the combined library catalogs of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Duke, Princeton and Yale, a collection of over 60 million volumes, and directly request expedited delivery of circulating items.

Cornell users can also request scans from Cornell-held material via Document Delivery, using their Interlibrary Loan account.

Users from outside the Cornell community can request loans of Cornell materials or scans of articles or book chapters held in the Cornell collection. Institutions and individuals not affiliated with Cornell should see Interlibrary Lending page for details about policies and charges.

Interlibrary Services staff search and process thousands of requests each year, both to and from libraries worldwide. Cornell lends and borrows over 56,000 books requests annually within the Borrow Direct partnership. For Interlibrary Loan, from 2005 to 2015, ILS processed 177,253 borrowing requests (getting material for Cornell patrons from other institutions) and 287,228 lending requests (providing Cornell items to outside libraries). In addition to facilitating the lending of physical items, ILS scans nearly 9500 articles and chapters annually. Using ILL purchase programs, ILS has purchased nearly 900 popular or hard-to-find materials for Cornell patrons, which are then added the Cornell collection.

Contact Information

Interlibrary Services Borrowing: olin-ils@cornell.edu, (607) 255-9564

Interlibrary Services Lending: olin-ils-lending@cornell.edu, (607) 255-5293

The Department of Research & Learning Services administers the reference and instruction services of Cornell’s Olin and Uris libraries and primarily serves the College of Arts and Sciences. The department includes the Maps & Geospatial Department and is home to many of the subject selectors who build the Olin and Uris collections. All department members are active in outreach to various groups of library constituents. The Department of Research & Learning Services in Olin and Uris libraries is a unit of Cornell University Library’s Research and Learning Services, which comprises seventeen unit libraries. Along with its core role in Olin and Uris libraries, the Department of Research & Learning Services also provides support for collection development, reference, instruction, and outreach activities throughout the Cornell University Library system.

A combined effort between Cornell Dining and Olin Library, the Amit Bhatia Libe Café serves specialty coffees, smoothies, pastries, sandwiches, salads, and snacks.

See the Libe Café Campus Dining Page for hours and additional details.

Phone: (607) 254-4344