An interlibrary loan is a service that provides material that is not available on our shelves. These items include books, magazine articles and books on tape. Items come from university libraries as well as public libraries throughout central Indiana, however we have borrowed from libraries all over the country. One item that is difficult to interlibrary loan is genealogy material.
Interlibrary loan differs from a regular loan in several ways.
Books can be requested from other libraries electronically, but delivery time and turn around time can sometimes take up to three or four weeks. For the lending libraries, processing the interlibrary loan request is more expensive than a regular loan, mostly because of the staff time involved, this may result in a fee being charged to the borrowing library and this is usually passed onto the individual patron. Returning postage, if required, is passed on to the patron. The majority of our interlibrary loan requests involve no fee and no return postage charges, since most of our requests can be filled through Indiana libraries. Loan periods vary, but each item will be marked with its exact due date.