Materials Available Through ILL

What May Be Borrowed?

• Anything not owned by the Duke Libraries may be borrowed if it is owned by another library that will agree to lend it.
• Anything owned by the Duke Libraries that has a status of Missing, Lost, In Process or Due.
• An item owned by the Duke Libraries that has been checked out by another patron and recalled by you, but not returned in a timely manner from the previous patron. You will receive notification from Access and Delivery Services informing you that you may borrow the item through ILL.

What Is Not Available Through ILL

The following types of material are generally not available through ILL:

• Entire volumes or issues of journals and newspapers. Exception: libraries will lend newspapers in microformat (e.g., microfiche or microfilm).
• Rare materials or original manuscripts.
• Reference works.
• Genealogy books.
• Recently published books or recent best sellers.
• Some doctoral dissertations and masters theses. (See Dissertations below to see about options.)
• Course textbooks.
• Audio/visual materials are often difficult to borrow.

Copies of Dissertations

Dissertations and theses are sometimes difficult to obtain from the libraries of granting institutions because many keep only a non-circulating, archival copy. We will, however, attempt to obtain loans from libraries that hold circulating copies. If we are unable to obtain a loan of a doctoral dissertation from an institution, we may be able to help you purchase a copy of a dissertation from ProQuest.