Knowledge Base

On January 18, 2024, the CUNY Libraries went live with a resource sharing partnership with SUNY. This collaborative effort makes the physical materials at both university systems (in the area of 17M books) readily available to patrons via OneSearch.

Participating Libraries

CUNY

• Collection: 5.1M physical books (items, not titles)
• Partners: 20 campuses (all except CUNY Law School)
  1. Baruch College
  2. Borough of Manhattan Community College
  3. Bronx Community College
  4. Brooklyn College
  5. The City College of New York
  6. College of Staten island
  7. Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY
  8. CUNY Graduate Center
  9. Guttman Community College
  10. Hostos Community College
  11. Hunter College
  12. John Jay College of Criminal Justice
  13. Kingsborough Community College
  14. LaGuardia Community College
  15. Lehman College
  16. Medgar Evers College
  17. New York City College of Technology
  18. Queens College
  19. Queensborough Community College
  20. York College

• Delivery times: 3-5 business days
  • Geographically concentrated
  • Single delivery service contract guarantees minimum 4 days/week service

SUNY

• Collection: 12.7M physical books (items, not titles)
• Partners: 52 campuses (only those that use Empire Library Delivery services)
  1. Alfred State College
  2. Alfred University
  3. Binghamton University
  4. Buffalo State College
  5. Cayuga Community College
  6. Clinton Community College
  7. College of Environmental Science
  8. Columbia-Greene Community College
  9. Dutchess Community College
  10. Erie Community College
  11. Farmingdale State College
  12. Fashion Institute of Technology
  13. Fulton-Montgomery Community College
  14. Genesee Community College
  15. Herkimer County Community College
  16. Hudson Valley Community College
  17. Jamestown Community College
  18. Jefferson Community College
  19. Maritime College
  20. Mohawk Valley Community College
  21. Monroe Community College
  22. Nassau Community College
  23. Niagara County Community College
  24. Onondaga Community College
  25. Rockland Community College
  26. Stony Brook University
  27. Sullivan County Community College
  28. SUNY Adirondack
  29. SUNY Brockport
  30. SUNY Cobleskill
  31. SUNY Corning Community College
  32. SUNY Cortland
  33. SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University
  34. SUNY Fredonia
  35. SUNY Geneseo
  36. SUNY Morrisville
  37. SUNY New Paltz
  38. SUNY Old Westbury
  39. SUNY Oneonta
  40. SUNY Oswego
  41. SUNY Plattsburgh
  42. SUNY Polytechnic Institute
  43. SUNY Potsdam
  44. SUNY Purchase
  45. SUNY Schenectady
  46. SUNY Ulster
  47. Tompkins Cortland Community College
  48. University at Albany
  49. University at Buffalo
  50. Upstate Medical University
  51. Westchester Community College

• Delivery times: 3-15 business days
  • Geographically dispersed
  • Individual contracts with delivery service provider, with terms ranging from 2 days/week to 5 days/week service

Patron Experience

Requesting Items

To the patron, the request experience is almost unchanged. The request option appears in the record's "Get it" or "How to get it" section:

The form includes updated instructions in the form description and a new field just before the submit button:

Patrons have to deliberately choose to send their requests to libraries beyond CUNY:

Picking Up Loans

Because the request comes as a request from the library (and not the patron), the request SUNY receives does not include the patron's preferred pick-up location. We have historically been able to pick up our CLICS requests anywhere so we wanted to ease ourselves into this new world order by asking the patron to acknowledge that the item may be delivered to a different library than where they usually pick up their materials if they choose to increase the pool of libraries that may be consulted to fill their requests.

In the future (and based on feedback we receive from patrons and library faculty and staff), we may ask the patron to opt out rather than opt in. The default option for "Look beyond CUNY?" may eventually default to "Yes."

We hope this is just a temporary solution, though, and we are working with the vendor, Ex Libris, to see if there is a way to include the preferred pick-up location with the requests that are sent outside of CUNY.

In the meantime, if a patron needs to "force" a pick-up location for personal reasons, they can log into the OneSearch instance of their preferred pick-up library and place the request there. We do not recommend widely advertising this workaround: though a patron uses the same credentials to log into each instance of OneSearch, they are actually separate accounts. If they save citations or create lists in one instance of OneSearch, they will not be available in the other instances of OneSearch. Remember, too, that OneSearch returns e-resources as results and it serves up the links using the local instance of EZproxy. The patron will see e-resources to which they do not have access—and even if their library subscribes to some of the same databases, they cannot log into the EZproxy instance of another library.

Seeing Loans

Patrons will see loans from SUNY among their CUNY loans. Because the item temporarily becomes the property of the library that requested it, it appears as an item in the requesting CUNY library. In their account in OneSearch, loans from SUNY will be indistinguishable from loans at their local CUNY library. They will also receive emails from the CUNY library that requested the item (and temporarily owns it).

Returning Loans

We can still return loans anywhere within CUNY, whether the owning library is at CUNY or SUNY. (Basically, if it was lent via Alma at CUNY, it can be returned anywhere at CUNY.)

Discovering More

The search scopes in OneSearch have been reconfigured to encourage patrons to find all materials available to them, including physical items available beyond their local library, and increase the discoverability of our vast collections:

Default Scope

The default scope is now "[College] + CUNY Libraries." This includes:

• Local holdings (physical & electronic, including CUNY-wide e-resources)
• Shared CUNY physical holdings

Local Scope(s)

The "[College]" scope includes local holdings (physical & electronic, including CUNY-wide e-resources) only.

Some libraries may have additional local scopes, such as "[College] Course Reserves," which return specific local materials.

SUNY Scope

The "SUNY Libraries" scope includes SUNY physical holdings only. This will return all the physical holdings at the SUNY Libraries, including items at non-participating SUNY partners and materials in non-requestable locations (e.g., reference, reserve, etc.). The request process is exactly the same as when placing a request on CUNY library holdings. The patron will be asked whether they want to look beyond CUNY and the request will go through the same workflow.

At the moment, there is an issue with the SUNY Libraries search scope wherein the facets do not appear as expected:

There is already a case open with the vendor, Ex Libris, to help resolve this issue.

UPDATE (2024-Feb-01): Facets now display in the SUNY Libraries scope.

Longer Loans

Initial loan periods for all generally circulating collections have increased to 16 weeks (up from 8 weeks), with the option to renew material for a maximum loan length of 48 weeks. Items that are overdue are now declared lost after 60 days (up from 20 days), at which point patron accounts are charged replacement fees. Due to the increase in available copies created by our resource sharing partnership, patron-initiated recalls are now disabled. However, library staff can continue to recall items needed for course reserves or other library business.

Lifecycle of a Request

When a patron places a request, Alma decides which partners to query based on their response to the "Look beyond CUNY?" question:

• If they say "No":
  • Alma will check the CUNY partners.
    • If an available and requestable copy is available somewhere at CUNY, Alma will select it and fulfill the patron's request using that copy and send it to the patron's preferred pick-up location (or the requesting library, if no preferred pick-up location was selected).
    • If there is no available and requestable copy anywhere at CUNY, the request cannot be filled and the patron receives an email that says a supplier could not be found.
• If they say "Yes":
  • Alma will check the CUNY partners.
    • If an available and requestable copy is available somewhere at CUNY, Alma will select it and fulfill the patron's request using that copy and send it to the patron's preferred pick-up location (or the requesting library, if no preferred pick-up location was selected).
    • If there is no available and requestable copy anywhere at CUNY, the request gets routed to the SUNY partners located in the NYC metro area.
      • If an available and requestable copy is available at one of the SUNY partners in the NYC metro area, Alma will select it and fulfill the patron's request using that copy and send it to the requesting library (not the patron's preferred pick-up location, even if one was selected).
      • If there is no available and requestable copy at any of the SUNY partners in the NYC metro area, the request gets routed to the SUNY partners location in eastern New York.
        • If an available and requestable copy is available at one of the SUNY partners in eastern NY, Alma will select it and fulfill the patron's request using that copy and send it to the requesting library (not the patron's preferred pick-up location, even if one was selected).
        • If there is no available and requestable copy at any of the SUNY partners in eastern NY, the request gets routed to the SUNY partners location in western New York.
          • If an available and requestable copy is available at one of the SUNY partners in western NY, Alma will select it and fulfill the patron's request using that copy and send it to the requesting library (not the patron's preferred pick-up location, even if one was selected).
          • If there is no available and requestable copy at any of the SUNY partners in western NY, the request cannot be filled and the patron receives an email that says a supplier could not be found.

This is the workflow represented visually:

While Alma transfers the request from one group to the next linearly (NYC to Eastern NY to Western NY), it looks at the partners in the group in a random order. Here is the list of SUNY partners grouped geographically: