Massey students and staff are the first in the country to be able to borrow books at the push of a button from Australian university libraries.

A reciprocal loan scheme called Bonus Plus will triple the number of books available, giving Massey free access to more than 4.5 million books from seven Australian university libraries.

Operated through the University Library website, it involves Melbourne, Newcastle, Ballarat, Murdoch, Deakin, Victoria Universities and Sydney's University of Technology.

Massey's Library will make up just under a fifth of the total shared collection, second only to Melbourne University.

All participants share the same Millennium Library Management System.

Requested books usually arrive within a week and can be borrowed for 21 days, and may be renewed if not requested by another borrower. Staff and postgraduate students can borrow up to 10 items at once, and undergraduate students up to five.

University Librarian John Redmayne says the service is an advance on the previous system, where requests for books from Australian universities had to be lodged by library staff.

"All New Zealand university libraries have borrowed from Australian university libraries for years via the interlibrary loan scheme," Mr Redmayne says. "The difference is the request is placed by the borrower and processed almost immediately by the lending library.

Albany campus librarian Valier Cohen says the system will provide quicker access to specialised books and material relating to New Zealand and Australia, such as Maori and Aboriginal history, culture, politics and art, that might otherwise be difficult or impossible to get hold of outside of the respective countries.