Why can't some items be borrowed?
Although we will attempt to borrow any material requested, lending libraries determine what materials they will provide. The Interlibrary Loan service rarely rents or purchases items; instead, it asks other libraries for copies and to borrow materials. The libraries are not required to provide their materials to use. Interlibrary Loan is very much like you asking your friends to borrow their iPod or DVD -- your friends decide if you can borrow it, how long you can keep it, and how you can treat it while you have it. Read below for some common material types that can be difficult for us to obtain, but we'll always try.
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| | | Materials owned by Joyner Library If you request items that Joyner Library owns, we'll refer you to our electronic, print, or microform collections. If the item you want is check-out, missing, or otherwise not available, let us know and we'll try to borrow it for you from another library.
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| | | Required Course Textbooks Please read a complete explanation as to why textbooks cannot be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan at this web page. | |
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| | | Material published or released within the current or past year Libraries typically take several months to over a year to acquire newly released titles. Many libraries will not loan their newly acquired books or they simply may be checked out by others already. If we cannot borrow a newly released title, the library will consider purchasing a copy.
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| | | Entire volumes or issues of periodicals Full bound versions of journals and magazines are usually impossible or highly costly to replace if they are lost or damaged, so most libraries will not loan them.
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| | | Reference works By their nature as being classified as reference works, most libraries have them in their reference departments and do not loan them to their own patrons, so will not loan them to other library's patrons. Most of the time, though, we can obtain photocopies of sections from reference books.
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| | | Rare books -- usually published before 1900 These books are typically fragile and impossible to replace, so shipping them could easily damage or destroy them. They can also be valuable and historically significant. Others may simply be restricted from being loaned because they were donated to or purchased for a non-circulating collection.
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| | | Original archival manuscripts Often these papers are only owned by one library in the world and no other copies exist elsewhere. They are too valuable, historically significant, or irreplaceable to risk having them mailed or even express shipped. Often when these materials are donated to or purchased for the library, they are promised or contractually bound not to lend them offsite.
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| | | Genealogical research materials Like reference books, rare books, and archival papers, genealogical works, whether individual papers or bound books, are often not loaned by libraries. These items are typically owned by few libraries and are irreplaceable if lost or damaged.
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| | | Newspapers in their original format -- usually are sent in photocopy or microfilm Very few libraries retain hard-copy newspapers because of the space they require and because newspaper and newsprint are not designed for longevity. Instead, most newspapers are microfilmed. Requests for newspaper articles are typically filled by borrowing the microfilm reels or getting a photocopy/PDF scan of the article.
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| | | DVDs, CDs, and other media Media formats are increasingly easier to borrow than in years past, although there are still libraries that do not lend their media. Records break. Cassette tapes and VHS tapes can get erased if run through certain security scanning equipment. DVDs and CDs scratch and break easily in the mail. Additionally, these media items tend be popular at the owning libraries or be expensive.
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| | | Computer software Few libraries own and circulate computer software because of the cost, how quickly they are outdated, and due to legal licensing liabilities.
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| | | Dissertations & Theses Dissertations and theses are often only owned by the college or university library where the degree was granted. Newer ones are often available online from those campuses or through the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text database. Older ones and ones from institutions outside of the United States of America are more difficult or impossible to obtain, but we'll try. | |
| | | Grey (gray) literature (unpublished working papers, certain conference reports, etc.) Because these, by their very nature, are unpublished, unverified, unofficial, etc. documents, they can be difficult to find.
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