Sometimes
you need books or articles that our library
does not have in its collection or in full
text from our online services. In that case
all current LEC students, faculty and
staff may request these items through
the library's interlibrary loan service,
called ILL for short. We will then
request these items for you from other libraries,
free of charge.
How
ILL Works:
ILL requests are made on this website: use
one online form for books
and another form for articles.
When you fill out the form (with as complete
information as possible!), click on the
Submit button at the bottom, and
your request is sent as an email message
to our ILL librarian. Once your request
is received the librarian submits this request
through the OCLC ILL system to several other
libraries that own the item you need. The
first library that has the item will then
retrieve it from its collection and mail
it to us (some libraries will even fax or
email articles). As soon as the item you
requested arrives, we will send you an email
message that your ILL request may now be
picked up at the library's circulation desk.
How
long does it take to get an item I've requested?
We advise that you allow 5-8 business
days between submitting your ILL request
and receiving it. That said, many libraries
typically send materials much faster than
that, and some libraries are now faxing
or emailing articles, which results in next-day
service.
Are
there any limits on what I can get through
ILL?
Our library uses OCLC's ILL service for
sharing resources between over 8500 libraries,
which typically provides 95% of the
materials requested by member libraries.
Even with this system, however, there are
still limits to what we can obtain from
other libraries: