Get help from the Libraries!

Current students and current and retired UMass Amherst faculty and staff may use Interlibrary Loan services to obtain a loan of books and other materials from a library beyond the Five Colleges or to obtain copies of articles and other materials from any library for free.

All Interlibrary Loan (ILL) requests will be submitted via our online form:

• You will need to fill out a "First Time User Registration" with your contact information and preferences.
• This registration sets up your ILL account and needs to be filled out only once.
• A separate request must be submitted for each article or book needed.

Once your registration is complete, you will then use your ILL account to make requests. There are two forms to choose from under New Request: Book/Film/Etc. and Article/Book Chapter.

• The more fields you fill out, the faster it can be for us to find the item you're looking for at another library.
• Separate requests must be submitted for each article, book chapter, or book.
• Once you've submitted your request, you will be notified via email when your item has arrived.
• Physical materials are held at the Learning Commons Desk in the Du Bois Library (or at the Science & Engineering Library if you designated that as your pick-up spot).
• If you requested an article or other electronic item, you can find it in View --> Completed Requests in your ILL account.

If you have further questions about using ILL, you can learn more on this page.

ILL Tips

Book Chapters

• If you are requesting book chapters, please submit a separate request for each chapter. We may get chapters from the same book from different libraries and submitting separate requests makes it quicker for us to fill your request. It also helps us to get things to you quicker if you include the ISBN for the book in the ISBN field. 

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 the liaison for your department 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.