Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery

Interlibrary Loan is the process through which the Biomedical Library borrows materials not owned by USA from other libraries. This service is available for USA Health Sciences students, faculty and staff.  As a member of the Network of the National Library of Medicine, we participate in national networks of interlibrary loan systems.

Document Delivery provides USA Health Sciences students, faculty and staff the option to request materials from the library's collection. For a fee (see below), the ILL/DD department will pull and copy materials from the University's library holdings.

Interlibrary Loan generally takes 7-10 working days to receive journal articles, while books usually take a little longer. For clinical medical emergencies first contact an ILL/DD staff person at (251) 460-6891, so we can expedite your request appropriately.  

For Document Delivery it generally takes 2 working days to receive articles.  You will be notified when your item arrives.

Rush requests can be accommodated for a $5.00 fee.

This will depend on the institution from which we borrow the book. Each library sets its own loan period.  To enquire about a renewal on a book borrowed from another library please contact the USA ILL office either by calling: (251) 460-6891 or email: illbbl@southalabama.edu

When we loan a book from our collection, the Biomedical Library's loan period is four weeks with a renewal of four weeks.

 ILLiad is the electronic system used to manage all Biomedical Library Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery requests. ILLiad requires a one-time registration where users create a user id/password protected personal account. All requests must be ordered via the ILLiad system.

• LogIn or Register for an ILLiad account. 

 Requests for the following materials will not be processed by the Interlibrary Loan Department:

1. Books owned by the USA Libraries but charged out. These can be recalled at the Circulation Desk or online.
2. Textbooks currently being used for USA courses.
3. Materials for class reserve or group use.
4. Recreational reading titles.
5. Requests that violate the copyright law.

Though generally not requested exceptions can be made for the following materials:

1. Newspapers or manuscripts.
2. Whole volumes or issues of journals.
3. Records, tapes, films, software, and other fragile materials.

 

 The Biomedical Library abides by the copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code) and reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law.