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: