That depends on a number of factors:
- Popularity of material
- Popular titles may take longer to obtain because they are checked out from the libraries we are requesting from.
- Date of publication
- Very new items are often not held in many libraries yet or not available for loan due to restrictions set by owning libraries for recently acquired items.
- Few owning libraries
- Items that are only owned by one or a few libraries may take longer to obtain since there are often restrictions in obtaining them.
- Items only held at international libraries take longer due to delays in shipping and request methods.
- Material type
- Audio-visual materials remain difficult to obtain, as many libraries have restrictions on loaning them outside of their libraries.
- E-books are not currently obtainable via ILL due to license restrictions and the lack of software to distribute the material.
- Entire run of a publication
- Many libraries restrict sending periodicals or limit the number of volumes they are willing to send. This often requires us to split up the request into multiple transactions and locate libraries willing to loan to us.
- Standard numbers
- Requests submitted with standard numbers, such as ISBN, ISSN, or OCLC accession numbers will automatically be submitted through our software without staff mediation.
- Do not preclude the number with text,eg - do not enter, "OCLC: 1234," simply include the number
- If including a HOLLIS number, please do so in the notes field and not in a standard number field.
- Requests submitted with standard numbers for e-resources will generally fail since those materials are not attainable via ILL. Please always locate the print record number instead.
- Language
- We encourage you to submit your request in the original language and include in the notes the translation or as much detail as possible. We do have a staff member with language knowledge in Korean, Chinese, and Japanese, but are unfortunately limited in other languages and rely on staff in other departments to assist in translations and locating standard numbers to request the item from owning libraries.
Remember to check Borrow Direct before submitting an ILL request.