Greenburgh Public Library Blog

InterLibrary Loan: From Near and Far

The practice of sharing items between libraries is as old as the inclination of people to collect books and manuscripts.  Medieval monasteries were the first to record a practice of letting visiting monks take one of their illustrated manuscripts so long as a book of equal value was left in its place (1).  In the United States, the first loan between libraries happened in 1894 when the librarian at the University of California at Berkeley began a program of interlibrary lending with the State Library of California (2).  That was later expanded to include other universities and colleges in the state.  If a library system does not own a book it is now standard practice to request the item from another nearby library or system.  Sometimes the nearest library will be a continent away!  I once made a request for an art book that was filled by the single library in the world that had a copy to lend.  That library was in Prague.  

Most often we do not need to go so far to find a book.  Any book that belongs to one of the 38 member libraries in Westchester County is available to patrons of any other member library.  By means of the hold function in our shared catalog and the routing service of the Westchester Library System, a book can go from the shelf of one library into the hands of a patron in another library in as little two to three days. 

When a book or journal article or other item such as musical scores is not available in our system we turn to the      
InterLibrary Loan (ILL) system by going to Worldcat.org.  That is the online catalog of over 2 billion items held by libraries around the world.  I did a recent search for an article published in 1941 called, "Pitchers and Catchers" by former baseball player and spy Moe Berg. I found it was in a bound collection of Atlantic Monthly articles at NYU, Princeton and Yale.  NYU responded, copied the article and sent the copies to Greenburgh.  Such a request can take from one to three weeks to arrive in the patron's hands.

Some libraries charge for this service (that book from Prague cost $25 to send to my library on the West Coast), but the Westchester Library System, which coordinates our ILL program, has no fee for this service, although sometimes we must pass along a printing cost from the lending institution.  If you are curious to see how to find an item that you are unable to find in our own catalog, go to Worldcat.org and see what library has it.  The libraries will be ranked by distance from you location, which I find a fascinating feature.  You can then use this link to fill out an ILL request for a book or this link to fill out a request for an article.  If you are still having trouble locating the item you are looking for, one of our librarians would be happy to assist you.

(1) Murray, Stuart. The Library: An Illustrated History. New York, NY: Skyhorse Pub, 2009. Chicago : ALA Editions, 2009

(2) http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb0m3n99bs&brand=calisphere&doc.view=entire_text