Education: Getting Started With Library Research

If we don't have what you're looking for, our Interlibrary Loan (ILL) department will borrow items for you from other libraries!

This is a free service for current students, and current and retired faculty, and staff.

You can get the following from Interlibrary Loan (ILL):

• Loans of physical items not available in Discovery Search, including books, DVDs, microfilm, and more.
• Scans of articles or book chapters not available online at UMass Amherst, including books or journals UMass holds in print.

Articles and book chapters are always delivered electronically.

You can choose to have physical items mailed to your home if you are off campus, or held for pick up at the service desk of the W. E. B. Du Bois Library, the Science & Engineering Library, or the Mount Ida Wadsworth Library.

If your material is restricted to use in the library only, you will be notified when it is available for use in the Microforms Reading Room (for microforms) or in the Archives & Special Collections Reading Room (for other materials). ILL will always communicate with you in advance if an item can only be borrowed with this restriction.

Sign up for an Interlibrary Loan account (see link below)!

• The first time you log in to your Interlibrary Loan account, you will be prompted to fill out a registration form.
• You will be prompted to log in to your Interlibrary Loan account using your NetID and password (the same credentials as you use to log in to SPIRE). Once logged in, select “New Request” from the menu, and then choose the type of request.
• To make sure we can fill your request as quickly as possible, be sure to select Book, Film, Etc. if you want to borrow a physical item (like an entire book or DVD) or Article/Book Chapter if you want a copy of a part of something (like a journal article or book chapter) and include an ISSN or ISBN whenever possible.
• Separate requests must be submitted for each article, chapter, or book.

You may also see other opportunities in library resources to link directly to your ILL account and request an item.

• When searching Discovery or another library resource, you can click on the “Request through Interlibrary Loan” to import the citation information for your request. This option will only appear if you are on campus or otherwise logged in to your account. You will be prompted to log in to your Interlibrary Loan account using your NetID and password (the same as you would use to log in to SPIRE).

If you have further questions about ILL and how it works, please check out the FAQ below!

Including an ISBN or ISSN in your request is the #1 way to speed up our turnaround time!

• ISBN is the 10 or 13 digit number assigned to books. The 13 digit number will usually start with 978- (if you use this one, remove the dash when entering the information in your request). You can often find the number by searching for the book online.
  • Example: Terry Pratchett, Where's My Cow?, ISBN: 0060872675 or ISBN: 9780060872670
• ISSN is the 8 digit number assigned to journals. You can often find the number by searching for the name of the journal and ISSN (such as journal fish biology issn). If you see two ISSN numbers, please select the Online ISSN.
  • Example: The Journal of Fish Biology, Online ISSN: 1095-8649

ILL added a DOI Resolver tool to the ILL article request page. This means that a you can paste in just a DOI, and most fields will fill out automatically with the click of a button.

• DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier. It is a number that can be assigned to an article and the link is permanent - you'll always be able to use that link to get to that page. You can find if there's a DOI by searching for the name of article and DOI (example: leverett pratchett guards doi). You might have to search the page in the results to find the DOI. They can be anywhere on the page!
  • Example: Leverett, E.L. (2018). ‘At Times Like This It’s Traditional That a Hero Comes Forth’: Romance and Identity in Terry Pratchett’s Guards! Guards! . In: Rana, M. (eds) Terry Pratchett's Narrative Worlds. Critical Approaches to Children's Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67298-4_9
• Not all articles have a DOI.

ILL is for materials that you know (or at least are reasonably sure) exist. If you're still exploring what might be out there and if it exists, please work with your liaison Jennifer first to identify what you're looking for.

We welcome patrons using ILL for fun as well as for research!

ILL will mail physical books to anyone off campus in the U.S., with no justification needed! Just make sure your account is set to "Mail to address" and the address is up to date. ILL can also provide return shipping labels so you can send items back at no extra cost. ILL just can't deliver to on campus addresses or addresses outside the U.S..

If there is something wrong with the article you receive (missing pages, images that should be in color in black and white, wrong item, etc.) -- please contact ill@library.umass.edu about it rather than putting in a new request for the same thing. That allows us to find and address the issue with the other library, rather than the second request getting stuck in duplicate review and possibly cancelled if we can't tell why it was placed.

ILL has been seeing an increase in various databases storing cookies in a way that might result in someone not seeing access options that they should have (whether direct access to an article or the "request through ILL link").Please clear your browser cache and cookies regularly, and make sure to access databases via the link from the A-Z list.