Interlibrary Loan (ILL): Resource Sharing: Interlibrary Loan Overview

What is Interlibrary Loan?

Interlibrary Loan is a service offered by the library that allows current Texas A&M University-Texarkana faculty, students, staff, alumni, Friends of A&M Library, Texarkana College students, faculty, staff and community to secure books or items that are not owned by the libraries. These items include book chapters, journal articles, thesis, conferences, dissertations, government and technical reports. Users can request an ILL electronically via the library Worldcat Discovery  and within some databases.

What can I borrow?

Materials Available for Request through My Library,  Get It For Me,  or Interlibrary Loan, 

Please remember to submit a separate request for each item. 

• Book chapters
  • Number of pages allowed is controlled by book vendor.
• Journal articles
  • Up to three articles/chapters from a journal issue/book may be requested.
  • Only five issue articles per issue a fiscal year.
  • All requests are evaluated for copyright compliance and may be canceled accordingly.  

• Books
  • If the Library copy is an E-Book and you need a print copy, please indicate in the notes field that you need a print copy.
• Dissertations/Theses
• Media (CDs, DVDs, videos, etc.)
  • Media items may take longer to arrive.
  • Media often have short checkout times.
  • Notice: Scheduling for classroom use is unreliable.
• Currently available from the TAMUT Library -- missing.
  • Request through My Library,  Get It For Me ,
  • Add the status to the notes field on the ILL form when requesting.

 Materials Not Available for Request through Interlibrary Loan

• Textbooks
• Entire journal volumes
• E-Books
• Reference items
• Reserve items

On average, it takes approximately 24-48 hours for your request to be processed. It will take at least 10 working days for us to receive your book.

One receiving is completed, you will be notified by the email address on your request that your item is available for pickup.

Therefore, the average turnaround time is 11-12 working days.

Before making a request, please search the library catalog, and e-books to make sure that the item is not available through or at the TAMUT library.  https://tamuttc.on.worldcat.org/discovery

Please allow ample time for your research needs!!

Article request fulfillment varies item to item and from institution to institution. Turn around time could be anywhere from 2-14 working days. Some article availability may be more limited than others and harder to fill due to several factors:

• The item requested has a charge and  only free items were requested. The library only requests from all non-charge participating lenders first.
• The lender may not own the volume or issue of a journal requested.
•  The item my be limited to only 3-4 lenders.
• The item may be rare, which results in unavailability.

Articles requested will be emailed as an attachment. Please ensure you have provided a working email.

Before making a request, please search the library e-journals to make sure that the item is not available through our databases. You can also search Google Scholar by article title to see if the articles you seek are available there.

Copyright Restrictions

• Under the guidelines of the 1976 U.S. Copyright Law as amended by consecutive enactments, a library within one calendar year may request photocopies of up to five journal articles from the last five years of publication of a journal title without infringing on the law. Once the limit has been reached, we will not order from that journal.
• In addition, a library user may only request one article per issue of a journal. Requests in excess of this rule will be canceled.