When researching the scholarly literature, you will sometimes find that a desired article is not available in print or electronically at the Missouri S&T library. When this is the case, you may still be able to get a copy of the article delivered to you from another library through the interlibrary loan service. There is typically no charge to the student or faculty member for this service.

In this tutorial, we will look at the process for requesting a copy of this article, which was found in the Academic Search Premier database:

After following the appropriate steps and finding that this article is not available directly through this library, you can begin placing an interlibrary loan request by clicking on the Interlibrary Loan (Illiad) button in the navigation bar at the left of all library web pages.

 After clicking on that button, you will be asked to log in to ILLiad, the system that maintains interlibrary loan transactions.

ILLIAD is not integrated with the other campus systems, so the first time you place a request you will need to set up an account and create a user name and password.

After logging in, you will be asked to choose the type of material you are requesting. For journal articles or papers from published proceedings, you will choose Request a Photocopy.

After clicking the appropriate button, you will be taken to a request form. You will need to provide as much information as you can from the citation for the article you are requesting.

Note that the first box on the form asks for the title of the journal your article was published in, not the title of the article itself.

Continue entering all the information you have available in your citation.

After you have entered the information contained in your article's citation, you will be asked to enter a cancellation date.

This date is needed because of the way the network of interlibrary loan systems works. Requests are sent out to libraries all over the world individually, and whether the requests are granted depends on the individual libraries. The cancellation date tells us when we can stop asking new libraries whether they will share the article with us.

You will also be asked where you found the citation for the article you are requesting.

Sharing this information with us is not essential, but it can be helpful if we have problems locating the article for you. It helps us find and correct any typos that may have accidentally ended up in your request, for example.

After you have provided as much information as you can, simply click the Submit Request button.

When the information you provided is accepted by the system, you will see a page telling you that your request was successful.

When we receive a copy of the article you requested, we will send you an email at the address you provided when setting up your ILLiad account. If we receive a faxed copy of the article, you will be informed that you can come to the library and pick it up. In most cases, we will receive the article electronically. In this case, you will receive a link at which you can download the article.