Borrowing

Students should expect to purchase any required course materials they need for class and should not rely on ILL to get their textbooks or other course materials. 

• The Law Library will not process requests for required course materials via interlibrary loans with limited exceptions for the following reasons: 
  • We cannot guarantee requests for required materials will be successful. 
  • We cannot guarantee that your request will arrive on or by a particular date. 
  • At our discretion, we will process interlibrary loans for required materials that are not course books and that have sufficient holdings to fill ILL requests. 
• For non-textbook ILL requests:
  • ILL requests are processed in the order they are received.  However requests are sent to different libraries to avoid asking the same library multiple times for an item they may have already sent.  We have no control over which ILL requests for textbooks get fulfilled and how quickly they are fulfilled. This might mean that your classmate, who put in an ILL request after yours, gets their ILL first.
  • The lending period is set by the lending library. It is very unlikely that, if you get your textbook via ILL, the lending period will last for the full semester. Obtaining textbooks via ILL should not be relied upon as a way to get guaranteed access to your textbooks for the full semester.
  • You may not write, highlight, or otherwise annotate textbooks obtained via ILL.
  • Do not remove ILL label that is attached to requested material.
  • Students must abide by the final due date provided by the lending institution.  Due dates can be found in your ILLiad account.  If a requested item is not eligible for automatic renewal it will say "No Renewals" both on the wrapper on the book and in your ILLiad account.   The ILL system typically grants an automatic two-week renewal period when the renewal request is submitted; any additional extensions are up to the lending library. If the library extends your due date (after they review the automatic renewal), the due date will be updated in your ILLiad account.  That is the final due date. 

What Can Be Requested Through Interlibrary Loan? 

• Non-Circulating material held in University Park collections. Many legal study aids located in the law library reference section are available electronically. If you need assistance locating or are interested in electronic resources please contact the library.
• Articles from journals held in University Park collections. 
• Material not held in the Penn State University Libraries collections. 
• Material held in the Penn State University Libraries’ collection but is currently checked out.

What Can Not Be Obtained Through Interlibrary Loan? 

• The University Libraries make every effort to supply you with non-circulating material regardless of format. Fragile, rare, or heavily used material does not circulate. 

• Reference, Rare, and Special Format materials from libraries outside the Penn State system are circulated on a case by case basis.

How Will Items Be Delivered? 

• Loans will be sent to the pickup location selected in your ILLiad user profile. To update or change the preferred loan pickup location log into your ILLiad account, click Profile then Update ILLiad Profile.    
• You will be notified by e-mail when items become available. 
• Scanned selections will be posted to the web. You will be notified by e-mail when the file becomes available. 

How Long Do I Have Access To Material Obtained via ILL? 

• Your article will remain on the web server for 30 days. You have the ability to print or download your article. 
• Book loans are set at the discretion of the lending library.   
• ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Book loans may include a one-time two-week renewal. If an item cannot be renewed it will say “NO RENEWALS”