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Resource Sharing
Resolving Routine ILL Issues

When there is a problem with an interlibrary loan transaction ILL partners should contact one another directly if possible. It’s best to begin the issue resolution process as early as possible while the paperwork and materials borrowed can be easily located. If you have trouble identifying the lender or need address and/or phone numbers, please contact your system clearinghouse or the interlibrary loan librarian at Resources for Libraries and Lifelong Learning (RL&LL).

Items Delivered to the Wrong Library

If you receive an item you didn’t request please contact the sending library directly as soon as possible. Please contact the library (borrower or lender) before returning the item. Consult RL&LL for additional information on items lent through OCLC or out-of-state Agent libraries. Please do not send mis-delivered items to RL&LL, please call instead, so we can help identify the cause and resolve the issue. You may be asked to forward the item to the correct borrowing library, generally through the statewide delivery.

Bill received with an item

If the bill is for the loan of an item, lenders are asked to send bill directly to RL&LL. Bills for overdue or lost materials are the responsibility of the borrowing library. Please do not ignore the bill or send it back when the book is returned.

If you have questions about the referral of out-of-state requests, please contact the RL&LL interlibrary loan librarian, Martha Berninger, at (608) 224-6161, toll free at (888) 542-5543 Extension 4, or email martha.berninger@dpi.wi.gov.

Two copies of a requested item received

This occurs quite often in interlibrary loan. The most frequent explanation is that a potential lending library receives a request, does not update the request to Shipped before the request expires (and moves on to the next library in the lending queue), and then the library sends the book. Meanwhile, the next potential lender has received the request and sent the book. Result – the borrowing library ends up with two copies of a book, and the ILL paperwork is not able to accurately reflect what has happened. PLEASE DO NOT FILL REQUESTS THAT HAVE EXPIRED. For more information on handling this situation, please see WISCAT Help.

"Need by" date Issues

Borrowers: It’s essential that the library staff member accepting an interlibrary loan request from a patron establish a reasonable Need By date. The Need By date is the date an item will no longer be of use to the patron. It must be a specific date, not ASAP (As Soon As Possible). Patrons should be advised that interlibrary loan requests sometimes travel through multiple libraries, and materials may need to be shipped long distance, and need by dates should be long enough to allow for those possibilities. A Need By date of less than two to three weeks will often result in an unfilled request.

A Need By date is chosen when the request is created and cannot be edited while the request is active. If the default Need By date, No Deadline, is chosen, the Need By date is 90 days from the date the request was created.

The Need By date is the most important date on the request. It over-rides any other dates that appear in the request. All work on the request stops once the Need By date has been reached. At that point the status changes to Expired and it will not be sent to any other potential lenders. It is possible for a request to arrive at a library and expire the next day if the Need By date has been reached.

Lenders: The potential lender need to check for Need By dates when reviewing requests. They should be sure to select a delivery method that will ensure the item gets to the borrower before the Need By date has passed. Not all libraries are participants in statewide delivery. Those that do participate in statewide delivery may not have delivery service every day. Libraries may occasionally need to email or fax an article or use another type of delivery not provided by statewide delivery service in order to meet a patron’s needs.

Public library system clearinghouses, brokers, defaults, and a few resource libraries must be extra vigilant in watching for Need By dates. Once a request has been updated to Will Supply / In Process the request remains at their library until the lender updates it to Shipped or Will Not Supply.