Published: June 1, 2020

To those who have reached out to us, our subject specialist librarians and our Ask a Librarian service with your questions concerning access to libraries facilities, on-site services and physical collections: thank you. We continue to provide information and updates at Coronavirus and Libraries Services.

We strive to provide exceptional virtual services and robust access to comprehensive electronic resources. We understand that it is challenging for our CU Boulder community of students, educators and researchers to work without access to libraries facilities, on-site services and physical collections. While university health and safety directives currently preclude this access, please be assured that we are working with the university to plan future, expanded access. 

Our interlibrary loan service continues to support requests for electronic materials, our comprehensive electronic resources are available to the university community, subject specialist librarians and the libraries’ Ask a Librarian service are available to provide virtual assistance, and we welcome course reserves requests for the summer and fall 2020 terms. 

In addition, the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS) (about and guide) provides online reading access to digital surrogates of 48% of the libraries’ print collections. The National Emergency Library (access) augments the libraries’ e-book collections (search and guide), and we are trialing or have purchased access to additional electronic collections of university press titles including University Press eBooks (EBSCO)University Press eBooks (ProQuest)EBSCO Academic eBook Collection and the Harvard Business Review Collection. We invite you to request electronic materials purchases through the Suggest a Purchase form or direct communication with your subject specialist librarian.

We appreciate how highly the CU Boulder community values libraries facilities and our rich and unique physical collections, and understand that the libraries’ virtual services and electronic resources cannot replace on-site access and our physical collections. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we develop plans to protect the health and safety of the CU Boulder community and look ahead to future, expanded libraries access.

Sincerely, 

Robert H. McDonald
Dean of University Libraries, Senior Vice Provost of Online Education

Leslie J. Reynolds
Senior Associate Dean of Libraries

Jennie Gerke
Associate Dean of Libraries