General Information

Interlibrary Loan is a formal agreement among libraries to share materials with, or provide photocopies to, other libraries. If you cannot locate the research materials you need in the WU Libraries Catalog, the Journal Title List or Summit, you may initiate an interlibrary loan request. Interlibrary loan service is available to Willamette University students, faculty and staff.

The Interlibrary Loan department is committed to doing everything possible to aid in all types of research. Any patron with a special, confusing, or uncommon request is encouraged to inquire - we will use all our resources in an attempt to help!

Guidelines

Most materials we borrow are from libraries with which we have reciprocal no-charge agreements. Occasionally materials are located only at institutions that charge to process Interlibrary Loan requests. The library absorbs many of these costs.

Students: The Interlibrary Loan department will pay up to $10 for student requests through Interlibrary Loan. If a request will cost more than this, a message will be sent to the student informing them that their request will be expensive, and verifying that the request is important to their research. The student will be given one week to respond; if they do not respond, or respond that the article is not important enough to warrant the money being spent, the request will be deleted. If they reply that they do need it, the request will be sent out, as though it were a faculty request. If a request is for an item that is too new, the student will be emailed and told to re-request the item in a month if they still need it.

Faculty/Administration: The Interlibrary Loan department will pay up to $25 for any faculty loan. If, in the rare occasion an item costs more than this, the department will contact the faculty to see if they wish to pay the difference out of pocket, or to examine alternatives to the costly loan. If a faculty requests an item that is too new (i.e. an article not yet published or a book still being processed), the ILL department will print off the request and rerequest it within the next 1-2 months.

Staff: The Interlibrary loan department will handle staff requests for research-related material like faculty requests. However, the Interlibrary Loan department will not pay for personal, non-academic (i.e. movies or compact discs) staff loans. Staff are not granted "unlimited" borrowing privileges for this material and are asked to limit personal requests to no more than five at any one time, and no more requests will be made until the five have been returned. The Interlibrary Loan department will use discretion when implementing this policy on borrowing for personal use, and will contact the staff member when necessary to clarify the nature of borrowing requests.

contact:

Melissa Treichel
Access Services Manager
503-370-6018


Rich Schmidt
Digitization Coordinator
503-370-6719


Shanel Parette
Circulation and Stacks Supervisor
503-370-6018