rules - ILL

Effective Monday, ILL will be sending a form e-mail (attached) to customers whose requests cannot be filled. This will substantially decrease their workload as they had been calling each customer when items are not available. Please have librarians try to get e-mail address from customers using this service. ILL will continue to call people without access to e-mail when an item is unavailable. The e-mail form will ask customers to contact their branch if they want to resubmit or obtain alternative materials. You may see some of the forms so we are giving you a heads up.

Just a reminder:
1. On an average it takes 7 to 14 days to receive material that has been requested through ILL.
2. We only get items that are available in the United States.
3. We do not necessarily get the items from the libraries listed on FirstSearch. ILL has access to a list of more lending libraries and the libraries you may see listed may not chose to lend the item. It may not be accurate information if you tell a customer a specific library where the item is available.
4. Please make sure to ask customers how much they are willing to pay if a lending library charges a fee. The most that is usually charged is $25.00. Customers can designate how much they are willing to pay ( nothing, up to $5, up to $10, etc.). The ILL department does it's best to find materials with no charge but sometimes it is impossible.
5. Remind the customers if they designate a fee that they are willing to pay, they are responsible for that fee whether or not the material is picked up.
A manual fine will be attached to their record. This is a new policy and will be discussed further at MACO. In the past BCPL paid the fee and was not reimbursed if the material was not picked up.