Interlibrary Loan Description
Interlibrary Loan (ILL) is a service available to the students, staff, and faculty of the University of Louisville. ILL specializes in obtaining materials that members of the UofL community need that are not owned by the Libraries. We do this by borrowing items, or requesting photocopies of itmes located at other libraries around the world. We can obtain nearly anything that has ever been published, including books, journals, video and audio recordings, and microfilm, within 2-4 weeks. In fact, the average time to receive a book is 12 days and the average time to receive a photocopy is 7 days. The Libraries will pay up to $20.00 towards obtaining any item for an ILL patron. Patrons may opt to pay an additional amount as well. There are also options for RUSH Requests. When another library agrees to lend something out of their collection, the chance always exists that it may never come back. For that reason, some items are difficult to retrieve. The following is a list of items that are sometimes difficult to obtain. When requesting items such as below, it is a good idea to give us a little more time than usual.
- Extremely old, rare, and expensive items.
- Reference books.
- Masters theses.
- Reports or speeches presented at conferences, but never published.
- Obscure foreign titles.
- Original music scores.
- Very new items published in the current year.
- Journal/Newspaper articles with partial or incomplete citations.
- Very specific editions that may also be rare.
- Artwork accompanying some books.
- Requests for very lengthy photocopies.
This list is not exhaustive and nothing on the list is impossible to obtain. Sometimes we have to settle for a photocopy, or do a little investigating before we can find exactly what you want, but we manage to find most of the materials.
IntrAlibrary Loan can also have materials shipped between the Health Science Campus Library, Kornhauser, and the Belknap Campus Libraries. We do not ship between the libraries located on the Belknap Campus.
Document Delivery is a service that is not provided by all the libraries all the time. The availability depends upon staffing and demand. For a fee, library staff will retrieve and photocopy materials needed by faculty, staff, students, and professionals. Currently the Kornhauser Library offers the most extensive service.