Interlibrary loan (ILL) is a service that provides access to materials not owned by the R. A. Williams Library. Through cooperative agreements, participating libraries share their collections with users at other libraries. Possible requests include copies of articles or temporary loans of books, dissertations, and media items from lending libraries.
Users may only request certain types of material via ILL. Not all of materials that may be requested are available, and the library cannot guarantee that a request will be filled. The following materials may be requested:
Materials Usually Available
Copies of articles (some copyright limitations may apply)
Loans of circulating books, circulating theses, circulating dissertations, and circulating reports
Conference proceedings or copies of papers from the proceedings
Materials Not Usually Available
Entire issues of journals
Rare, old, or fragile books (unless available on microfilm or microfiche)
Audiovisual materials
Recently-published books
Non-circulating items such as reserve or reference books
The following items may not be requested via ILL:
Course textbooks
Genealogical materials
"Bestsellers" (Popular items currently in high demand and available at the public library)
"Bestsellers" (Popular items currently in high demand and available at the public library)
Audio-visual recordings owned by the library
Popular films available through rental or streaming services
Original manuscripts
If a user submits an ILL request for an item available in the library’s collection, the ILL staff will cancel the request and notify the user.
The library does not limit the number of requests a user may submit. The first 20 requests per person, per year (beginning of fall trimester to end of the following summer trimester) are free, except as provided below. If a user submits more than 20 ILL requests (combined books and articles) in one year, the user pays any charges of the lending institution. Regardless of the number of previous requests, there is never a charge when an ILL book or article request is necessary because the library’s copy is missing and has not been replaced.
For more information about the library's interlibrary loan services, please see our Interlibrary Loan Policy.
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