What is Interlibrary Loan?
Interlibrary Loan is a free service that allows you to borrow physical materials not available through St. Catherine University, or request digital copies of articles or book chapters.
Allows you to borrow or request:
- articles from journals we own in print, or from journals we don’t have access to
- books not in our collection
- book chapters from books we own in print, or from books not in our collection
- other materials not in our collection, including DVDs, musical scores, dissertations, and more!
Available to:
- current St. Kate’s students
- current St. Kate’s faculty and staff, including faculty emeriti and
- Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJs)
For more information and direction on using this service, see this guide:
FAQs
How long will my request take?
- Digital requests for articles and book chapters are typically filled within 2 business days
- Physical requests for books and DVDs are typically filled within 4 business days
- These delivery times are averages; the speed of delivery ultimately depends on the lending library and their workload.
How will I know when my request is ready?
- You will receive a notice by email as soon as your digital request is ready for download, or your physical request is ready for pickup.
- Digital requests for articles and book chapters will be delivered in electronic format via email. In some instances, you may receive an email directly from the lending library. Please download a copy of any PDFs to ensure you have continued access to it.
- Physical requests for books and DVDs will be held at the Circulation Desk for two weeks. Please pick up items as soon as you are notified to take advantage of the full loan period.
How long do I have with ILL items?
- Loan periods for ILL items are set by the lending library, so they can vary from as little as two weeks to as long as four months. In general, textbooks and AV materials have shorter loan periods.
- Most ILL items can be renewed at least once, but not all lending libraries approve renewals.
Are there any limits?
- AV materials: Some libraries are hesitant to lend out AV materials, and when they do, the loan periods may be very short.
- Book chapters: Due to copyright restrictions, we cannot fill more than two chapter requests from the same title. If you need more than two chapters, please request the physical book.
- Ebooks: Electronic books are not available through ILL due to copyright restrictions.
- Entire journal issues: Most libraries do not lend their journals, and entire journal issues cannot be digitized due to copyright restrictions, so entire journal issues are not available through ILL.
- Textbooks: Loan periods for textbooks can be much shorter than normal loan periods, so you may not get the textbook for the entire semester.