RACER (Rapid Access to Collections by Electronic Requesting) is one of several services offered by Scholars Portal (a cooperative venture, partly funded by the Ontario Innovation Infrastructure and the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL)). RACER is designed to expand access to scholarly resources via an interlibrary loan request interface.
With our September 14th launch of the RACER system, York joins all other Ontario universities in using a common interface to place interlibrary loan requests. RACER allows you to search the library catalogues of Canadian universities as well as the collections of other North American research libraries, the Library of Congress and the British Library.
How does it work?
RACER allows you to logon to the system and submit requests directly to Resource Sharing staff; they can then process your requests with minimum delay and improved turnaround time. You can choose to search from a number of pre-existing profiles of various library collections or you can create your own customized profiles to search specific collections of interest to you e.g. business, medicine. RACER provides a tracking feature so you can monitor the status of your requests.
How do I use RACER?
RACER requires you to register the first time you use it. After that, simply visit the RACER website (you might want to bookmark this) at http://racer.scholarsportal.info. When placing requests, you have two choices: you may fill out a blank form or you can search multiple library catalogues simultaneously, locate an item of interest and then have the details sent directly to our Resource Sharing staff without having to type in any additional text. All you need to do is identify an item of interest. Don’t worry about determining its location or availability – that’s the beauty of RACER; those details are all taken care of behind the scenes!
A Few Handy Tips:
Internet Explorer is the preferred browser when searching RACER – Netscape is not recommended.
Once you've logged into RACER, look for the Advanced Search link and click.
RACER acts like a union catalogue (searching multiple catalogues simultaneously) and so you'll want to verify that a title of interest is not already held by York University Libraries. This is easy to do -- once you've got your search results (returned in random order by the various catalogues), just look for the YORK link at the top and click there.
