BERKELEY, Calif.—UC Berkeley students now have the chance to borrow original works of art as part of the Graphic Arts Loan Collection program at the university's Morrison Library, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The program, which began in 1958 and resumed this month after a hiatus since the 1980s, allows students and faculty to borrow artworks valued at $600 or less for a semester.

"You can take it home and hang it on your wall," said Alex Warren, manager of the library. "It is framed. You can renew it after a semester and have it all year."

"Most students are used to having posters on their walls," he added. "This allows them to have real art."

Among the more than 700 paintings, etchings, lithographs, and engravings available for borrowing are works by Georges Braque, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Edward Gorey, and contemporary local artists.

The program was started by architecture professor Herwin Schaefer in 1958 and used to lend out pieces by Rembrandt, Matisse, and Picasso. In the 1980s, the library underwent a renovation and the collection an appraisal, after which many of those pieces were deemed too valuable to loan.

Berkeley's program is not the only of its kind; MIT and Oberlin College have similar ones, and some museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, rent out art by local artists in the hopes of selling the pieces.

"You are living with the art 24/7, and you are learning to appreciate what it is as opposed to standing in front of it for a minute," said Mimi Gaudieri, executive director of the Association of Art Museum Directors in New York.