Interlibrary Loan & BorrowDirect Policies

Find answers to our most common questions below. Please Contact Us if you have any questions or concerns not addressed here.

All supplied requests are for personal and private use only. This includes any materials supplied electronically.
It is your responsibility to adhere to all copyright rules and regulations. Please familiarize yourself with them here: Dartmouth Copyright Office
All items are subject to recall at any time.
All items are expected to be returned by their assigned due date.
Patrons are expected to monitor their email and respond promptly to any overdue or recall notices.
Patrons are expected to treat borrowed materials as their own. You will be held responsible for any fees related to loss or damage.
Failure to abide by the policies laid out herein may result in the loss of privileges.

ILL materials have due dates assigned by the lender, but 8 weeks is typical.
Renewals may be requested but require lender approval.
Materials will be held at your chosen pickup location for up to 7 days, then returned to the lender. If you need an extension, please let us know ahead of time.
We will make an attempt to obtain textbooks or materials that are on course reserve. We do not recommend relying on this service as they are generally in short supply.
Fines for lost or damaged materials are determined by the lending library and may exceed our standard $85 fine. Please handle borrowed items with care.

BorrowDirect materials are a single 16-week loan, with no option to renew.
We always recommend searching BorrowDirect first, as it is the fastest method to obtain materials you may need for your research.

Electronic items are supplied directly to your Interlibrary Loan account as downloadable PDFs. You will need software to view them. Some free PDF reader's include Adobe Reader & Foxit Reader.
Scanning requests for materials protected by copyright are limited to 25% of total page count (max. 100 pages).
Materials not subject to copyright have no set limits; but large scans are subject to staff approval.
PDFs are retained in your account for 90 days. Please save them to your computer if you will need them longer. Once removed from your account they would need to be requested again.
We have no control over the quality of scans supplied from outside sources. If you have specific needs please utilize the notes field in the request form.
We may be able to obtain E-Books through this service but they are not easily found due to complicated licensing agreements. If we cannot locate a lender we may substitute a hard copy.

If you are an alum with an active Dartmouth Library account and a NetID, you may use ILL.
There is a minimum $16 charge for all filled transactions, including scans from our local collection. Billed monthly.

From time to time we purge older records from ILL in order to comply with the record keeping requirements of copyright law.