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 at no charge.
All Interlibrary Loan (ILL) requests must be submitted via our online form:
- A separate request must be submitted for each article or book needed.
- You will be required to fill out a "First Time User Registration" with your contact information and preferences.
- The username and password are the library barcode found on your UCard.
- This registration sets up your ILL account and needs to be filled out only once.
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.
- 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
- Articles:
- For articles, fill out the ISSN/ISBN field with the ISSN of the journal. This helps us get the article faster!
- You can use Publication Finder to find the journal's ISSN. You may need to click View Details to see the ISSN on the record for the journal.
- 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.
- Books:
- For books (especially those with multiple editions), fill out the additional details in the request, such as the field for the ISBN and the field for edition. These fields can help us get the book quicker and get the correct book that you want.
