Interlibrary Loan

For the purpose of Interlibrary Loan, a Distance Education Learning (DEL) student is defined as a student who is taking all online courses, does not come to a campus on a regular basis, and lives beyond a 60-mile radius from either the EWU Cheney campus or the EWU Spokane campus.  Students that meet those requirements will be eligible for DEL delivery of Interlibrary Loan materials to their homes once confirmation of mail address has been completed.

ILL borrowing policies apply to all students regardless of whether they have home delivery or pickup of material on campus.

Before submitting an interlibrary loan request, be sure to check our catalog first to double check that we don’t already have a physical copy and/or an eBook available for you to use.

Interlibrary Loan is intended to serve EWU related research, scholarship and work.

Requests can be placed for items (books, DVDs, CDs, recordings, scores, journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, microfilm etc.) which are:

• Not available in the EWU Library collections
• Owned by EWU but checked out and/or missing
• On Reserve

Please let ILL staff know in the NOTES field of the ILL request form if you are requesting an item that is checked out, missing, or on Reserve.

What we can't request:

• Items held in Special Collections (Rare books etc.)
• Reference books, entire journal issues, online only material
• eBooks *due to various licensing agreements, eBooks are not something we can request through interlibrary loan)*

Textbooks:  It is very difficult to borrow recently published and/or updated textbooks because most libraries keep them on reserve or non-circulating so their own students and faculty can use them. We will try to borrow these for you but they often come back unfilled. You may request only one copy (per title) of a textbook per quarter. Due dates are at the discretion of the lending library.

Interlibrary Loan Textbook policy (Effective 6/1/17):  One textbook request, per title, per quarter. No duplicate textbook requests in the same quarter.  Overdue ILL books that are considered lost will be billed to the borrower's university account. Charges may be non-refundable. Patrons that fail to return ILL textbooks on time, will be placed on a library use only restriction for the remainder of the current quarter and the following quarter.

Borrowers (patrons) are responsible for loaned material from the time it is picked up at the Circulation Desk at the JFK Library until the time it is returned.

Due Dates: Please keep an eye on your due dates for items you’ve requested; it is your responsibility to renew/return when they are due.

Due to the heavy volume of requests that Interlibrary Loan receives, please submit no more than 10 requests per week.

Overdue books:

• If Interlibrary Loan material is not returned within the loan period set by the lending library and is 30 days or more overdue, the borrower's Interlibrary Loan account may be blocked and they will not be able to request materials until the item(s) in question is returned.
• If an item borrowed through Interlibrary Loan is lost, the borrower is responsible for the replacement cost of the material as determined by the lending library. Replacement costs of $100 per book are quite common and there will be a non-refundable processing fee. If Interlibrary Loan lost book replacement costs are not paid by the end of the spring semester, the invoiced amount will be transferred to the borrower's library account, which is then billed through the bursar's office.

It is very important to return borrowed materials on time. Failure to return materials on time damages our relationship with other libraries and compromises our ability to borrow materials from them in the future. Lending libraries can, and do, block us from borrowing any more items if we have very overdue books. This adversely affects all EWU students, faculty and researchers.

Recalled books:  Sometimes lending libraries will cut short the lending period. These books must be returned immediately. We will send you an email message telling you that the book has been recalled and that the due date has changed.

Library Use Only and other conditions:  Sometimes lending libraries send special materials to us on the condition that they are used only in the library. These materials are marked In-Library Use Only, they must not be taken out of the library. Sometimes we also see books where photocopying is not allowed, or only selected pages may be copied. It is important to respect special conditions as set by the lending library.

Borrowers will be notified by email when an items arrives vie their ewu.edu email account.

Physical materials: All borrowing activity involving books, microforms, and other physical media is strictly library-to-library. Requested items are delivered  to the JFK library and/or mailed directly to Distance Education students and faculty.

Electronic media: Copies of journal articles and other electronic copies are delivered electronically and made accessible to currently enrolled EWU students, staff and faculty as a.pdf to your ewu.edu email on file. You have 30 days (or 5 views, whichever comes first) to view and/or download articles before they are automatically deleted from the system.

On rare occasions we receive articles on paper that cannot be delivered electronically, due to size or quality, or other restrictions, then the paper copy will be available to pick up as above.