News & Blog

Our featured question for February 2021 is: “What do I do if the article/book I need isn’t available through UCF Libraries?”

Interlibrary Loan is the service for you!  Does your article have the Request Item/See Options link?  Have you searched the Books/Catalog for a title and it doesn’t come up in your search results?  If so you can use the free service available to UCF students, faculty and staff.  They can borrow a physical book for you from another library or get the PDF of an article.

The video that was here is out of date and has been archived. Click here to download the video for viewing.

For more information go to library.ucf.edu/services/borrowing-from-other-libraries/

No library can possibly have every book or article, and when you are doing research there are times where you need something that the UCF library just doesn’t have. This is when you need to call in the experts at the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) office. Libraries call this resource sharing, a way for libraries to make their resources available to each other in an efficient way.

Where do I go to make an ILL request?

Go to the Borrowing from Other Libraries webpage. There is a video introduction to the ILLiad software showing you how to make a request.

Things to think about

1. Don’t wait until the last minute to make your resource list for a project or paper. Interlibrary loan can take from 7-10 business days for a book (depending on where we get it from – it could be from Florida or from California). So, request your books early!
2. Articles are sent electronically within 3-5 business days typically. So, request your articles early!
3. While it seems like a good idea to interlibrary loan textbooks, most often other libraries will not lend them. Academic libraries generally keep textbooks on reserve for their own students and don’t share with other libraries. So, please keep this in mind.
4. We always try our best, but we are not miracle workers. That means that we can’t always fill your requests 🙁. Out of 16,000 requests from all of you last year, we filled 90% of them. Those are amazing stats, by the way.

Have any questions? Contact the Interlibrary Loan & Document Delivery Services Department in the John C. Hitt Library 2^nd floor room 222. You can also call us at (407) 823-2383 or email us at  illbor@ucf.edu

Congratulations to Adam Manno, student assistant in the library’s Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery Service! Adam is the winner of the first awarded Steven Sotloff Memorial Endowed Fund scholarship. The endowment honors the memory of UCF alumnus Steven Sotloff, who was killed after being taken hostage as a freelance journalist by Islamic terrorist group ISIS in 2014. Manno is expected to graduate in May 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a minor in political science. He has worked in Interlibrary Loan for three years.

What do Amsterdam, New Zealand and South Africa all have in common?  They’re all places where books from the UCF Libraries collection have recently traveled to via Interlibrary Loan!  

UCF takes pride in being an international lender to help fill the academic research needs of foreign libraries.  In fact, there are currently 312 international institutions that are registered to request UCF materials through Interlibrary Loan.  

In the past year alone, Interlibrary Loan has filled over 100 requests from international borrowers, some of which pay large shipping costs to obtain valued UCF materials.

So, the next time you find yourself perusing a book from the library stacks, remember that it may have traveled far and wide, across the world and back again, to be in your hands now.

Can’t find what you’re looking for in the UCF Libraries?  Submit your own Interlibrary Loan request for a book, book chapter, journal article & more, by visiting the Borrowing from Other Libraries page on the UCF Libraries website.