Interlibrary Loan

In a previous post, I defined some library terms and interlibrary loan was one of them. I want to explain just what interlibrary loan, also known as ILL, is and how it works.

As stated in the definition, interlibrary loan (ILL) is borrowing materials from other libraries. In Texas, we have the TexShare card that lets us borrow from other libraries so what's so special about interlibrary loan? The TexShare card is great if the library that has the book or article you want is near you but it really stinks if the nearest library is 400 miles away. This is what makes ILL so great, your library can get that item even if it's 2000 miles away! You will have to be patient, though. Even with the Internet, moving items still takes time.

Libraries use the WorldCat database to find out which library has the book you want and through this database, we can request the book. This process may be as fast as 1 week or it may take as long as 2 months. It all depends on who has the book and who is willing to loan it to other libraries. If it's articles you're looking for, then this could take less than a week! That's because unlike books, articles can be delivered electronically and libraries will usually forward them to you via email.

When requesting a book or article, be sure to give as much information about the item you want as possible. For books be sure to include title, author, publisher, and copyright date. This is because there is often more than 1 book with the same title or there are many editions of the book and if you get an old edtion, it may not have the information you need in it. When you're requesting an article, include the full citation information. This means the author, title of the article, title of the journal, volume and issue number of the journal and the date the article was published. The more information you can give the library about the article, the faster the article will get to you. I once had a student ask me to help her locate an article she had requested using the citation she found in her textbook. It turns out the citation had the wrong date but because we had the volume and issue number, we were able to find the article and get it to her.

So filling out those forms may be a pain but they could be the difference between you getting the right article for your research or just settling for what is available.