Interlibrary Loan

Need a book, article, or other resource your school library doesn’t have? Ask your librarian or search your library website for information about interlibrary loan (ILL). This service lets you borrow materials from other libraries if your home library doesn’t have what you need.

• When you request a book through interlibrary loan, the physical copy is typically mailed to your library for pickup.
• If you need one or two chapters of a book or an article from a journal, those are typically scanned and emailed directly to your school email address. Libraries rely on fair use for scanning book chapters or articles for student use.
• Each college or university adheres to copyright and fair use policies, so check with your library if you have questions.

Check to see if your library is part of a consortium of multiple libraries. A library consortium is a group of independent institutions that agree to work together and pool their library resources to provide materials to their students that might be difficult for them to purchase alone.

For example, Borrow Direct is the sharing program of the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation, which is a group of Ivy League schools plus other partners such as MIT, Stanford, the University of Chicago, Duke, and Johns Hopkins. A student or faculty member at any member school can search a combined catalog of the partner libraries and request a book directly, without going through a librarian. Requested items are typically delivered within a few business days, which is much faster than traditional interlibrary loan. 

There are hundreds of consortiums across the United States covering every state and region, and every type of library, including public libraries. There should be information about whether your library is part of a consortium on your library's Interlibrary Loan site.