Q. What is Interlibrary Loan (ILL) and how can I place an ILL request?

If our library doesn't own something, we can attempt to borrow that item from another library system. 

An interlibrary loan (ILL) is a transaction in which library material, or a copy from/of the material, is made available by one library or institution to another upon request. Simply find the item in our Discovery Catalog on the Library Homepage (it will find even items we don't own but can request) and use the blue interlibrary loan button attached to the expanded record. Search here: 

It is recommended that you find the item using a Discovery Catalog Search and have it prompt you to ILL if we do not own it because it will populate all the information about the item in the form. Also, it is good to check the catalog first because many times the library actually owns the material and you can just place a hold on it.

NOTE: If you are searching for an article in a specific database, sometimes it will say we do not have it, because it does not know we have it in another database. The Discovery Catalog, however, will be able to tell which database has a journal title and therefore grant more options to access to the article you are seeking. 

Do a search for the material and, if it is not held by TCC, it will say "Held by other libraries worldwide" instead of "Held by Tulsa Community College Library." Click on the title for access options. 

Tricks for finding the item you are looking for are: 

• Search by ISBN to be taken directly to the edition to request (you can pull ISBNs from Amazon or Google Books) 
• Use the limiters in Discovery on the left hand side after searching to narrow down the results 
• If it is an article, try placing the title in quotation marks so that it searches as a phrase. If the title contains a colon, hyphen, or something else, you might try making quotation marks around the punctuation after removing the punctuation 

After clicking the title of the result, it will present a blue "Interlibrary Loan" button that you can select:

The button will take you to a form where the item information should automatically populate, though you can make changes as needed. Specify your pickup location if it is a physical item you are requesting. 

If this method does not work or is temporarily not working, you can manually place a request using the link found on this page. See links below to more information. 

 

 

 

 

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