ILL needs a clue . . .

Sometimes the requests we receive are very cryptic. For example, we received a request for newspaper microfilm that gave only the town and the date - no state information, and not the name of the paper.

When we looked up the name of the town, we found that three states in widely different parts of the US had a town by that name, and each had a library. Luckily we were able to reach the patron, who clarified what state she needed.

We also receive requests for items that have been released in multiple formats: book, large print book, audio cassette, CD, DVD, and VHS. It helps us tremendously to know what format you need, so please indicate that on the form. If it doesn't matter whether you have a DVD or VHS, please let us know that too. Sometimes if we can't find one format, we can find another.

Amazon often puts an ASIN in their records for which there is no ISBN. Unfortunately, many of those do not work in OCLC, the database we use for searching items. If the ASIN starts with a B or a 6, we cannot use it. ISBN-10 or ISBN-13's usually work - whichever you can find is fine.

The more clues we have, the faster we can locate an item!

Is there anything you can't get?

We have received many requests that we were unable to fill, for a variety of reasons.

• Reason 1: No library wants to lend the item. This can happen with very rare items, older publications, and hard-to-replace genealogical material. It also frequently happens with DVDs, videos, and CDs - very few libraries are willing to let these items out.
• Reason 2: Some libraries may be willing to lend the item, but charge a fee to do so. Many academic libraries charge $20.00 or more to lend items to public libraries.
• Reason 3: The item has just been released or published. No library wants to let a recently acquired item vanish from their collection, when their taxpaying patrons may want it.
• Reason 4: The item was scheduled to be published, but has been delayed. If no one has the item, we cannot obtain it.
• Reason 5: Citation errors. With the advent of the Internet, more information is available on a variety of topics. Unfortunately, some people's citation lists are not as accurate as others; titles may be misquoted and misappropriated. Other people refer to these pages, and the errors perpetuate themselves.
• Reason 6: The item may not be available in the format you want. We have had increasing demand for books on CD; they are not released fast enough for the just-published book to have a CD format, unless it is a guaranteed best-seller.

We will do our best to obtain the items requested, but not everything ever published is available for interlibrary loan. We can usually fill 75-80 percent of the requests we get.