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Interlibrary Loan - Borrowing

Interlibrary Loan provides a means of expanding the Library's resources for PSU faculty, staff and students as well as community patrons by obtaining needed material from other libraries. This is primarily a free service and is available to all patrons with valid PSU ID and PIN using a system known as ILLiad. Materials owned by the Axe Library or one of the other Pittsburg area libraries are not obtained on Interlibrary Loan, these requests are referred to the Circulation department and a hold or recall is placed on the item.

On average, it takes at least 7-10 days to fill an ILL book request, and at least 2-3 days for journal articles, which are deposited directly into your ILLiad account. There is usually no charge to you for borrowed items, although the nationwide average cost to get a book to another library and back is almost twenty-five dollars if you consider employee salary, shipping fees, hardware and software expenses, etc.

Textbooks for current PSU courses are not requested on Interlibrary Loan, the University Bookstore will provide those items. CDs and DVDs may be available; however we must limit requests to ONE active DVD title, and TWO active CD titles at one time.

Renewals on borrowed items may be available, and this is done from within your ILLiad account. We do not ask for renewals on overdue items and only one renewal is granted. A renewed book, including mail time, could be away from the owning library for two months or more. A second request should be submitted and the item will be obtained from another library (without renewals) if it is needed for a longer period of time.

Due date reminders and overdue notices are automatically sent to patrons' e-mail addresses. Fines are fifty cents per day for the first and second day the item is overdue. A one dollar per day charge takes effect on the third day after the due date. Invoices on late items are sent to your e-mail account.

Charges for lost or damage items obtained on ILL will be set as designated by the owning library. Other, local charges may also apply. The Interlibrary Loan Department reserves the right to suspend ILL privileges and place holds on academic records until all charges have been paid. Replacement fees are waived if the item is returned before we reimburse the lending library. Overdue charges are not waived.

Types of materials available on ILL are, among others:

• Books
• Photocopied articles
• Government documents
• Census microfilm
• Theses and dissertations - Many theses and dissertations may be borrowed, most libraries will loan them if they have more than one copy. Since these items are usually owned only at one library (of the institution where they were written), there is a higher possibility of a lending charge. We may also purchase the majority of dissertations through Proquest's Dissertation Express. You may purchase them directly online using a credit card, or we would be happy to order them for you. The copy is delivered by express mail and are usually received within three or four working days.

Verification tools:

Serials Solutions:

• Serials Directory find ISSN's, indexing sources, online versions of journal...
• All that JAS: Journal Abbreviation Sources is a registry of Web resources that list or provide access to the full title of journal abbreviations. A link listing of web sites (general and subject area specific)
• Genamics JournalSeek is the largest completely categorized database of freely available journal information available on the internet. The database presently contains 55033 titles. Journal information includes the description (aims and scope), journal abbreviation, journal homepage link, subject category and ISSN.
• PubMed (NCBI) Journal Browser - Search by PubMed Journal Title abbreviations or by ISSN
• PubMed Single Citation Matcher - match individual citations using partial information.
• PSU Patron Department & Status page
• WWW Library Directory (Michael Sauers)
• Other verification tools from ILLWeb
• MARC Standards (Library of Congress)
• Symbols and Interlibrary Loan Policies in Canada

Search for publications put out by:

• American Chemical Society (ACS)
• Blackwell Publishing (Sciences, Law, Humanities, etc.)
• Elsevier (Scientific, Technical, Health)
• Frank Cass Publishers (History, Soc. Sci, etc)
• HighWire Library of the Sciences and Medicine (Biological, Medical, Physical, Social Sciences...) Also can search MEDLINE from this site. Topic Map @~@~
• Oxford Journals
• Sage Publications
• Springer-Verlag LINK (Scientific)
• Wiley Interscience Journal Finder

Online Journal Archives:

• American Physical Society Online Archive (Physical Review A, B, C...).
  APS Search Engine (searches all pub's back to 1893)