In 2016 we are fortunate to have a plethora of books and periodicals indexed online.
Even with all of that and with the libraries in our home areas, there are undoubtedly books, microfilms, and periodicals to which you don’t have direct access. Think about all those genealogy books, county histories, family histories and other items that are in non-circulating collections at libraries distant from where you reside. Why are these materials non-circulating? They may be valuable, one-of-a-kind or expensive to replace, or something that is often used by library patrons. Yet, you still want to see that page or pages.
How to use those without a trip to that city or state? There is a solution that many genealogists don’t realize is perfect for us. It’s Interlibrary Loan (ILL). Other books or periodicals may be duplicates and available for distant researchers to request or the library allows an item to be gone for a couple weeks. That latter scenario can be frustrating if you go to your own library and find that something you want to use is not available because it was loaned to a family historian in another state!
Ask at your city or county library if it participates in Interlibrary Loan. Then check on whether that is any cost on your library’s end. The lending institution may impose a fee to cover a service provided to a non-resident and to cover copy and postage costs. Today, some will send you a copy of an article via an email attachment or in a cloud-based format. There may still be a charge. I think most, if not all, of the ordering today is done via electronic means.
If you wish to borrow a microfilm from a library or historical society, be sure your library has a reader on which you can view it! You will have to use it in the library where you order it. Hopefully there is a system for making a copy whether digitally or on paper.
Before you approach your own library that participates in ILL, help yourself by checking the catalog and website of the place from which it will be ordered. Don’t put your own helpful library in the position of trying to order from a place that doesn’t participate.
Be sure you know which edition of the book or which issue of a periodical is the correct one. Knowing the exact title and other information is vital. I use Worldcat.org to help ascertain all this but first I check whether the item is located relatively near where I live. Once you search for a title in WorldCat, then click on the entry, and scroll down the page a bit, you will see a place to enter your zip code. That will tell you how far from your zip code a copy of the item may be found. You may not have to use ILL to see it. If it’s too far away, then check into ILL.
Some states have a statewide system for ILL. In Minnesota, it’s MNLink. An area college or university library may participate in ILL but usually it is offered only to students and staff. Be sure to check whether ILL in another state is offered only to residents in that state. They are the taxpayers!
Some helpful links:
Library of Congress Interlibrary Loan
© 2016, Paula Stuart-Warren. All rights reserved.
I often relate stories about writing to foreign archives, and finding that the citations which they send are available in American libraries via I.L.L. And as our local library does not lend newspaper microfilm, but the NY state library does, out of staters can get that also via I.L.L.