The Power of Interlibrary Loan

Interlibrary Loan or Resource Sharing is a service that borrows and lends materials to national and international libraries for users. ILL has two distinct, yet integral, functions, borrowing and lending:

• For borrowing, an SDSU library user, which can be an undergraduate, graduate, staff or faculty member, can request material such as, books, articles, or audiovisual items that the library does not own.
• Lending provides books and scans or pdfs of articles for national and international libraries.

Each distinct function is vital because if the library did not lend its materials, the library's users couldn't borrow items.

Complex Services Made Easy

Interlibrary Loan uses ILLiad as its main system to process both borrowing and lending requests. Contrary to rumors, ILL does not have magical powers, the department uses several services, along with ILLiad, such as, OCLC, Get It Now, Reprints Desk, RapidILL, several search engines and databases, and even Google and Amazon, to ensure that its users, or other libraries, receive the correct material being requested. These resources also help to expedite requests, and keep costs down. An interesting fact to keep in mind, the average borrowing request costs the library around 30 dollars.

Your ILL check list:

1. When requesting books, always check the library catalog first. If the book isn’t found, check the Circuit catalog. If still not found, then request via ILL.
2. When requesting articles, always check the library’s databases and/or journal holdings. If the article isn’t found search Google. If that fails request through ILL.
3. If you forget your ILL password, there is a link under the login.
4. If you are a first time user, you will need to create an ILL account. There is a link under the login.

* Interlibrary Loan is no longer a service desk, the best way to contact this office is by email, ill@mail.sdsu.edu or Jesica Brubaker at jbrubaker@mail.sdsu.edu.

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