What Can & Can't Be Requested
In general, interlibrary loan is for requesting books and articles. If an item isn't a book or an article (e.g. a DVD), it will probably be best to talk to the Interlibrary Loan staff before making your request. See the last section of this guide, "Questions or Comments", to find out whom to talk to.
Here's a list of categories of items that can't be requested through Interlibrary Loan:
- Books and articles already available to Santa Clara University - See the previous section in this guide, "Where to Look First". If something you're looking for is already available to you through a database we subscribe to or through the Link+ book consortium, it generally can't be requested through interlibrary loan.
- Print copies of digital reproductions - To amplify the preceding point, if a work is digitally available as a complete reproduction of a print item, then we won't request the actual print item through interlibrary loan. For instance, books and articles on Hein Online are images of the original print works, so we generally won't request these items through interlibrary loan for citechecking or other purposes.
- Textbooks for current law school classes - You can't borrow casebooks or other assigned reading for your law school classes through interlibrary loan. These materials are hard to obtain as most other law libraries either don't purchase casebooks or else have casebooks they're currently using on reserve for their own students.
- Special Collections/Archive materials - You can't borrow material from another library's special collections or archives. Most libraries simply will not loan this material to another library. Due to the rarity of this material, there is usually no way we could repair or replace this material if damaged.
There may be more particular items that, in the opinion of the interlibrary loan staff, we won't be able to obtain, but the list above is of items we generally will not process requests for.
