About

About the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation

The Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation (IPLC) is a voluntary union of 13 sovereign academic libraries: Brown University, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Stanford University, and Yale University.

Mission

To advance research and higher learning, the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation fosters the open exchange of ideas. Through strategic investments, policy development, and collaborative initiatives, we innovate in the interest of open, equitable, and sustainable knowledge sharing to shape the progress of society.

Background

The Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation had its genesis in another partnership: namely, that between Columbia, Penn, and Yale to develop the highly successful BorrowDirect resource-sharing service. BorrowDirect went live in Fall 1999. In 2002, the partnership expanded to 7 member institutions, with the addition of Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Princeton. In 2011, the partnership grew again, to 9, with the addition of Harvard and MIT. Between 2013 and 2016, it grew to include its current thirteen institutions, with the addition of the University of Chicago, followed by Johns Hopkins, Duke, and Stanford.