As we have done in January 2017 and in 2016, we will soon be “delinking” your names from your ILL request histories. This means that after June 2017, you will only see the requests you’ve made in 2017, or ones that haven’t yet been completed (even if they are older), in your record.

We delink your information to make sure that we do not keep more information about your records than we need–your request record is private information, and the safest way to secure private information is to just not keep it.

How to Save Your ILL Request History

If you would like to save your ILL requests from before 2017 for your own reference, please do so by June 1, 2017. Here’s how:

1. Login to your GC ILL account.
2. Click on View > Request History on the left, which will give you all your finished ILL requests. (OR click on “All Requests” which gives you current requests, as well.)
3. Highlight the fields from “Transaction Number” to “Status” and drag down to highlight your entire list
4. Right click to Copy
5. Open an Excel worksheet
6. Click on the first cell, then right click to Paste, choosing the second icon (Match Destination Formatting).
7. Adjust your column widths, save your file, and you’re done!

Tools that Help Manage Research

If you need an alternative to keep track of your ILL requests as a record of your reading, we recommend using Zotero or another citation manager.  These tools help you manage your reading history, and to create citations and bibliographies when you write.  You could also just use an Excel spreadsheet, but it is best practice – and a great time saver – to use citation managers. (Unfortunately, exporting items from Excel into managers like Zotero would ultimately result in a loss of data and/or incomplete citations, so the best way to add ILL citations to citation managers is directly, one by one.)

If you have any questions, please contact us at ill@gc.cuny.edu.

Thanks for using interlibrary loan, and happy summer!