Did you know?

Do you know how Interlibrary Loan (ILL) works?

This post will give you a brief play by play on what happens and how it works

Here's what you, the user does:

• You find a citation.
• Check the citation in the library catalog to see if we subscribe to it in print or check Online Journals to see if we have it in another database.
• If not, you head to the ILL page (or use the prepopulated ILL forms in the EBSCO or Wilson databases) to make your request.
  
• That's it for you! What you've done is found the citation, checked the library catalog, and checked online journals. You then made your request with the citation information and your information.
  

What happens next:

• Interlibrary Loan staff receive and review your request. We make sure that we have all of the information that we need to process your request.
• Our ILL staff then check to see who has the book or article and are they in one of the groups that we belong too. Why can't we just get it from a library that you found that has it? Well we may not belong to the same group or they don't have that exact issue. Or they want to charge us too much money. Why is this important? Because we don't want to have to pass on the cost of ILL onto you.
  
• We then choose a grouping of libraries that has the material that you requested.
  
• Then its up to these libraries that we've asked to borrow from. That's why it takes a while for your books and articles to come. We have to wait just like you for the materials to arrive. We have no control over the time it takes a lending library to get us the articles or books.
  
• Once we receive your item(s) we will notify you that it is ready for pickup.

That's the basics of how ILL works. If you have any questions during these steps make sure to get in touch with one of the reference librarians.