The UC Berkeley Library will provide a contactless pickup service for all borrowers who have Cal 1 Cards or campus library cards.

According to Mark Marrow, head of the library’s Access Services Division, library users will be able to request print materials via the OskiCat Request button on the library catalog. Once library staff members have located the materials, the user will be notified and will be able to make a 15-minute pickup appointment through the LibCal reservation system.

Marrow said the user will be given seven days to go to Moffitt Library’s third-floor entrance and use their Cal 1 Card or campus library card to receive the items.

Elizabeth Dupuis, the library’s senior associate university librarian, acknowledged that the library contains a “great deal” of content accessible only in print.

“We know how critical these printed materials are for a scholar’s research, whether working on an independent project or completing a thesis or dissertation,” Dupuis said in an email.

The service is currently only open for print materials from the Main Stacks and Morrison Library collections, but as other library collections become accessible, their print materials will be added to the service, according to Marrow.

Dupuis said the service has been incredibly complicated to design, as the library had to take into account its unavailable locations and limited staff members’ personal considerations. The library was also forced to reconfigure its online catalog system and develop new workflows.

According to a UC Berkeley Library news article, the library currently relies on a nonprofit digital repository called HathiTrust that provides users with access to digital copies of print materials.

If an item requested by a user from the new pickup service is available through HathiTrust’s Emergency Temporary Access Service, the user will be notified about the digital copy via email, according to Marrow.

Dupuis added that despite current limited print accessibility, the library will soon be offering special research appointments at the Bancroft Library to aid campus faculty, staff and students who require print materials from the special collections housed on-site.

This service, along with the pickup service, are additions to services like online research consultations and online workshops that the library has been offering for several months.

“We are still recovering from our buildings being closed, with thousands of returned and newly processed items to be quarantined, sorted, and reshelved for them to be findable for paging,” Dupuis said in an email. “I want to shout out to all the Library staff who have worked hard these past months to make this service possible.