Interlibrary Loans

Interlibrary Loan (ILL) is a free lending service offered by the Landman Library to provide members of Arcadia’s community (with valid arcadia.edu login credentials) with materials otherwise unavailable through our campus’ collection. Books and other printed materials, full-text journal articles, and media not owned by Landman Library or found in a subscribed online resource may be requested through this service. ILL services operate during normal business hours Monday-Friday except for holidays and scheduled breaks during the academic year. We are unable to process or fulfill ILL requests during weekends, holidays, or scheduled University closings.

Interlibrary loan turnaround times vary depending on the type and availability of the requested materials. Some articles may arrive as soon as the next few business days, others may take longer; allow a minimum of a full week for articles and two weeks for books. We do not provide “rush” services for ILL.

We use two distinct ILL networks: EZBorrow for physical materials, and Tipasa for articles, book chapters, and print books unavailable through the EZBorrow network.

Whole ebook loans are (generally) not available through ILL due to licensing and copyright restrictions. A very small number of libraries may loan them to us, but right now that is the exception rather than the rule. If you request a whole ebook loan through ILL, please indicate whether or not you will accept a print copy instead.

Print books and other physical (non-digital) materials may be requested directly through EZBorrow, a service that draws from over 50 regional academic library collections and provides longer loan periods (but no renewals). Not all materials are available through EZBorrow, but it is our service of choice for monographs. EZBorrow does not fill request for electronic materials, articles, or book chapters; use Tipasa for those materials.

If you place an EZBorrow request that goes unfilled, our staff will move it over to our other ILL system (Tipasa) and process it for you.

If you are unable to locate your book through EZBorrow, use our other ILL system, Tipasa.

To log into Tipasa use your Arcadia credentials. From the patron portal, users will be able to place direct ILL requests, view the status of active requests, view due dates and overdue information, and place renewals when available.
To start an ILL request in Tipasa, first select the Create Request button. (NOTE: the search bar at the top searches some but not all Arcadia holdings as well as non-Arcadia resources; it may not be helpful for placing ILL requests.)

We send automated notices to patrons about delivery of materials, due dates and overdues, and other communication regarding your requests.

We are currently unable to borrow whole ebooks through ILL due to technical and legal restrictions, although a few libraries may be able to loan a limited number of titles digitally. For ebook borrowing, try searching our catalog.

We strongly recommend using either the Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browser with Tipasa; there are known compatibility issues with Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari, and most other browsers.

There are two ways to place an ILL request with Tipasa: directly through your Tipasa patron portal or via a link out from an online resource (where available)

Depending on the material, a patron can fill out one of three forms: book, article, and other. Each form requires enough citation info in order to be processed – Title, author, and date at minimum, plus any other relevant info. Providing as much citation information as possible will give us the best opportunity to find the appropriate materials.

Providers such as EBSCO, ProQuest, Ovid, and Sage allow auto-populating of the Tipasa request form. Look for a “Request via ILL @ Arcadia” link or similar when viewing an article citation in one of these resources.

PLEASE NOTE: Because ILL requests are tied to each individual patrons’ Arcadia account it is important that requests NEVER be submitted for another patron through your personal account.

When physical copies of requested materials arrive and have been processed, the patron will receive a notification informing them that the ILL request is ready to pick up. Physical materials can be retrieved at the Circulation Desk in Landman Library. You will need your Arcadia ID to check the book out. The due date and info on whether or not the book can be renewed will be printed on a book band – please do not remove the book band. If the book is returned without the book band, your account may not show the book having been returned.

Books should be returned by the due date on the book band at the library’s circulation desk or after hours in the book drop by the front door of the library. If the book is renewable, you can request a renewal through your library account.

Electronic copies of full-text articles and book chapters will be sent through your Tipasa patron portal where they can be accessed and downloaded. Once articles have been received, they may be accessed a total of five times within 30 days before the link expires. Once downloaded, it is yours (and yours alone, due to copyright policy) to keep.

Requests for materials already owned by the library will not be filled; instead we will send you a notice of how to locate it. If you are having issues accessing our physical or subscribed online resources, please contact a librarian for assistance. 

ILL mbooks are the property of the lending library and must be returned by the due date (or if recalled by the lender). If you lose an ILL book or do not return it within 30 days of the due date, you will be responsible for paying any replacement fees charged by the lending library – that cost is entirely at the discretion of the lender. Once an invoice has been issued by a lending library, the patron has three days to return the material before the fees are charged to their Arcadia account. 

The Interlibrary Loan staff works hard to keep requests moving at a steady pace. However, it is important to know that ILL also requires the cooperation of the lending libraries as well. We ask for your patience in the process and if you do not receive any communication regarding the requested materials within two weeks, please contact the ILL department at ill_mailbox@arcadia.edu. 

When we sent out your request for a journal article, we ask our lending partners to send only the final* published version of that article (the “Version of Record”). Journal articles often appear in pre-publication forms such as pre-prints or uncorrected proofs, and these are often different than the typeset, proofread, published version. You will also see articles published as an “epub ahead of print” for digital editions of journals – these are also versions of record.

(* some articles may have corrections or updates published after the version of record is published; those changes are most often later included in digital versions of those articles.)

Articles may also be published as freely available Open Access (OA) articles in both e-journals and in institutional repositories, although there is no universal standard for which version will be published as OA. If we locate a suitable version of an OA article, we will email you a link to it instead of sending your request to lending libraries. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about article versions.