Coming soon to York University Libraries…RACER

Interlibrary loan requesting at York will soon be changing.

RACER (Rapid Access to Collections by Electronic Requesting) is one of the new provincial initiatives of the Ontario Scholars Portal. The Scholarsportal.info Project is a cooperative venture, partly funded by the Ontario Innovation Infrastructure and the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL), to expand access to scholarly resources.

All Ontario universities will be using the common RACER interface to make interlibrary loan requests. You will be able to search, simultaneously, the catalogues of up to 20 Ontario universities (and other collections) and place requests without having to key in bibliographic data.

RACER will allow library staff to process your requests with minimum delay and improved turnaround time. Registration will be required the first time you use the new RACER system. With your York Libraries ID and PIN you will be able to track the progress of your ILL requests.

RACER has already been implemented for York's Law Library, and all York libraries will begin using the new version of RACER this winter. Look for the RACER logo on the Libraries' homepage under Notices.

Get a sneak preview of the upcoming version by logging in as a guest at http://racer.scholarsportal.info/. Your guest login will let you preview the bibliographic searching function - try searching other universities' catalogues! Note that as a guest login you will not be able to place interlibrary loan requests at this time.

Questions and comments may be sent to Mary Lehane, Manager, Resource Sharing Department (mlehane@yorku.ca).

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