Slight ILL Policy Change

The Chester Fritz Library is making a slight change to its ILL policies for faculty.  This only affects requested items we’re unable to obtain without supplemental charges from the supplying library. In the past, we paid up to $25, with faculty responsible for any additional charges.  Now, faculty will be required to pay the full cost.  They’ll be notified of costs in advance, and asked if they wish to proceed.  If they do, payment must be made in advance.  Please note that this affects only a very small portion of the ILL requests we handle; last year, which was typical, it accounted for 1.5% of transactions.  We have many reciprocal ILL agreements with academic and public libraries all over North America and beyond; these libraries supply us with requested items at no charge, and we do the same for them.  But on rare occasions, we’re unable to obtain very specialized items from one of our many partners, and must go to a library that charges, often a corporate library.  In those cases, charges may be anywhere between $20-$80 or more.  Unfortunately, we can no longer provide these subsidies.  The library regrets the necessity of this change.

There are no changes for staff or students.  For ILL requests placed by students, the library will continue to cover the first $25 of any fee incurred.  In the rare event of a fee exceeding that amount, the student will be asked if they wish to pay the difference before we proceed.