Are you a patron in need of material that isn’t available at FSU Libraries? If so, their Interlibrary Loan Department has got you covered!
FSU Libraries Interlibrary Loan Department provides the service of giving patrons of the Libraries access to request articles, books and other materials owned by another library or from other outside sources. Through the FSU Libraries Interlibrary Loan services, there are three ways for patrons to get the material they need: using the FSU Catalog, UBorrow, or Interlibrary Loan (ILLiad). FSU Libraries asks for patrons to check the catalog before requesting material from outside sources to see if they have them or not. For a faster delivery of print books from colleges and universities in Florida, patrons can search through UBorrow, an unmediated interlibrary loan service. ILLiad is used to request material from libraries around the world.
Lindsey Eckert, an assistant professor in FSU’s English Department, was able to get access to a copy of Rowden’s A Biographical Sketch of the Most Distinguished Writers of Ancient and Modern Times that she requested from Emory University. Although there were some issues encountered during the process, the endless support of the FSU ILL Department helped her tremendously.
As a patron, Lindsey requested access to the frontmatter of a book from Emory and was later contacted by the department at FSU about her request being received and processed. However, there was a mistake in the ILL processing of her request since the material came from the University of Wisconsin-Madison instead. After Lindsey addressed the issue with the Resource Sharing Manager at FSU, James Elliot, he got back to her saying that the department did in fact send the request to the university; however, they declined to fill it. As a result, the request went down the line and was eventually filled by UW-Madison, according to James. He then advised Lindsey to contact Emory again and welcomed her to share his contact information with them for more support.
After contacting Emory, Lindsey received an answer back from them suggesting that she put in the request again through the department at FSU before they would be able to send the requested pages to her. “I suggest this only because the item is located at an off-sight facility at Emory, so it would take a day or two to get it to me anyway,” said Mark Johnson, the library service desk supervisor at Emory. Although Lindsey followed this instruction, she ended up having to put in another request saying that she was still trying to get access to the material she needed; this is when Emory ILL Lending Coordinator Kathy Britt-Rogers stepped in to investigate the issue at hand of the request. According to Kathy, it turned out that there was an issue with keeping record of the request due to short staff, so James was able to step in as well and resubmit the request.
Despite all the going back and forth between the Emory Library staff, Lindsey, and James to make the process of making the request a success, the third time was a charm. Lindsey thanked both James and Kathy dearly for their help with resolving the issue; she even went on to acknowledge James in her own work to highlight how awesome the FSU ILL Department is and how they make every effort to support scholars of the university in times of need.
Leave a Reply