Did You Know…? Interlibrary Loan Edition!

In order to meet the varied information needs and research interests of the The Graduate Center community, all of us in the Library work to connect you to needed information in a variety of ways. Our interlibrary loan specialists, for example, have filled over one thousand borrowing and lending requests per month in the last year. And, we are always happy to work with you so that we can connect you to even more information. We, like you, look forward to resuming access to print material that we borrow from other libraries, when we can all safely return to our library. And, meanwhile, we want you to know more about what we can do, now and always! For example, did you know that…

1.    ILL benefits greatly from technology and automation – As soon as you submit an interlibrary loan request from a database, as long as it contains enough information, processing can begin automatically. This enables ILL scans of many requests (not all…but some!) to be filled in just minutes.

2.    ILL also relies on the skilled labor of library workers – Our work includes both the physical (scanning and packaging) and the intellectual (we research incomplete citations, locate rare resources, contact authors, and regularly communicate with you about questions and alternatives, once we have exhausted ILL possibilities).

A recap of InterLibrary Loan requests in Fall 2020

3.   ILL lends to and borrows and from libraries around the world – In the past year, alone, we have borrowed from and lent to libraries in Australia. Lebanon, Canada, Italy, Egypt, Germany, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, and more.

4.   ILL can get you scans of Table of contents or an Index or an entry in an Index – That way,  if cannot access the entire book, you can request pages you need.

5. ILL’s acronym is very mistaken – In fact, far from encompassing even a little “ill” will, “ILL” has earned the appreciation of the GC community as evidenced by tweets and emails…and which we always appreciate hearing!

Thank you for the kind feedback about ILL!

If you have ANY questions, at ANY time, our library resource sharing specialists are here to help:

Please contact us at ill@gc.cuny.edu

 

About the Author

Beth Posner is the Head of Library Resource Sharing at The CUNY Graduate Center Library.