Interlibrary Loan
Search & Verification Guide
Tips for verifying citations and finding library holdings for interlibrary loan requests.
This site presents links to tools for verifying citations in different academic subject areas, searching
strategies for different material types, and tips for finding and verifying library holdings around the world.
Tools by Subject
Art and Art History
-
Art Full Text
Use to verify article citations in art history from 1984-present.
-
Bibliography of the History of Art
From 1973-present.
- Art Index
(Ref Z5937 .A78)
From 1929-present.
- For art books and exhibit catalogs not cataloged in OCLC or RLIN, check:
Business & Communications
Criminal Justice
Education
- ERIC
Use to verify citations related to education and teaching from 1966-2003.
Includes ED and EJ documents.
English Literature
History
Medical topics (Medicine,
Nursing, Pharmacy)
- PubMed (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed)
PubMed is the best place to verify citations for medical topics. Use "Single
Citation Matcher" on the left hand navigation bar to pull up individual
articles. To verify journal titles from abbreviations and find ISSN numbers,
paste the abbreviation into the "Journals Database" search screen.
-
CINAHL
To verify citations in nursing, from 1982-present.
Music
-
RILM
The RILM Abstracts of Music Literature go back to 1969 online. Be careful
of incomplete citations and confusing citations for conference proceedings.
Psychology
Physical Sciences
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Tools by Material Type
Books
- Amazon.com (www.amazon.com)
Use Amazon.com to find publication date, ISBN, cost, availability. Can
be helpful in verifying non-scholarly titles or very new titles that do
not appear in OCLC.
-
Books in Print
Use similarly to Amazon.com. I usually use to verify price and availability;
search interface often yields no results.
-
WorldCat
Take advantage of the powerful search features available through the FirstSearch interface. Be specific, choosing author, title, and publisher fields instead of keywords, limiting by year, and limiting by material type. Try using "microform" as a keyword to find film and fiche alternatives to paper. OCLC offers online learning aids for searching WorldCat:
Census Data
Some U.S. Census data
is held at our library. Detailed records from each census are called "Soundex"
indexes and are available on microfilm from the National
Archives and Records Administration (www.archives.gov/welcome/index.html) (NARA). Reels corresponding to specific
states and regions are usually locally owned and non-circulating. These
reels can be rented
or purchased from NARA, or can be viewed by visiting one of NARA's regional
research
centers (www.archives.gov/facilities/research_centers.html).
Conference Proceedings
Conference proceedings can be difficult to verify. Sometimes they are cataloged
as serials; sometimes the individual volumes for each year of a conference
are cataloged as books; sometimes each year of a conference has a different
title and the proceedings are cataloged under that title; sometimes records
exist all of these ways for one conference. To find hard-to-find conference
proceedings:
- Searching WorldCat
Try doing an author keyword search in WorldCat for the sponsoring organization's name,
limiting to material type "serial" or limiting by date.
- Searching at the
University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (www.library.uiuc.edu/catalog/)
Try a variety of keyword searches ("Any Word Anywhere")
in UIUC's library
catalog (www.library.uiuc.edu/catalog/). This is especially effective in finding older conference
proceedings in the sciences, etc.
- Request from the
sponsoring organization
Search Google for the sponsoring organization, and look for "Publications"
or "Conferences" on its website. Sometimes the proceedings will appear
there or, if they were never published, you can contact the organization
to request a copy.
- Request directly
from the author
Search Google to find the author of the conference paper and request
a copy directly from him or her.
- American
Sociological Association Association Papers (www.asanet.org/pubs/papers.html)
These are mostly unpublished, and the ASA does not have copyright or distribution
rights to them. See the above link for more information. These are not
available through Interlibrary Loan.
- Search an Institutional Repository or Google Scholar (see below)
Dissertations and Theses
- In the U.S.
Use Dissertation
Express (www.umi.com/hp/Products/DisExpress.html) to find the school a dissertation was written for. Include
this school in your lender string or request from it on a blank work form
if the title is not listed in OCLC (this includes Canadian schools).
- Canadian dissertations
Canadian dissertations may be full text online in the Theses Canada Portal (www.collectionscanada.ca/thesescanada/index-e.html). They are also available on microfilm from the National
Library of Canada (OCLC symbol NLD).
- British dissertations
British dissertations are available on microfilm from the British Library
(OCLC symbol BRI). Some schools may require patrons to sign a "Thesis
Declaration Form" for a loan; the British Library will alert us of this
(or this information is available online at www.bl.uk/services/document/btsindex.html).
- Foreign dissertations
CRL will purchase foreign dissertations on microfilm and lend the microfilm
to member libraries (UMK is a member library). Request on blank work form with the note "please purchase if you
do not own." Alert the patron of this, because it can take 6 months or
more to receive the item.
Government Documents
- GovDocs Resources for the ILL Librarian (leep.lis.uiuc.edu/publish/kkopchok/525/GovDocs4ILL.htm)
Tips and a guide to navigating government information for interlibrary loan. Created by Katie Kopchok.
Journals
- Ulrichsweb (www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/)
Use Ulrich's to verify journal titles, find alternate titles (such as
foreign language titles), and find ISSN numbers. Can search by keyword;
includes publication information and dates.
- CUFTS (cufts.lib.sfu.ca/tools.shtml)
Use the CUFTS Journal Finder to verify where journal titles are indexed and where they can be found full text.
- Jake (jake.lib.sfu.ca/)
Jake used to provide the same kind of information that CUFTS does now, but is not currently updated.
- PubMed Journals Database (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=Journals&itool=toolbar)
Interprets all official medical journal abbreviations and provides an ISSN.
- WorldCat
Do title or author keyword searches, limiting by date or material type, to find journal titles
in WorldCat. Including the keyword "microform" helps identify titles that are unlikely to be available in paper, especially
newspapers.
Music Scores
Try the Eastman School of Music in Rochester (RES) for music scores.
Newspapers and Newspaper Articles
-
LexisNexis Academic
LexisNexis includes articles and abstracts from many different newspapers
from 1969-present; for best results, limit searching to specific titles by using the "Sources" link at the top of the search screen.
-
Academic Search Premier
This EBSCO database also includes full text coverage of many newspapers.
-
WorldCat
Do title keyword searches limited by date or material type to find newspapers
in WorldCat. Including the keyword "microform" helps to identify OCLC records for older runs of newspaper titles. Use the "Succeeding Title" and "Preceding Title" fields to navigate runs of historical papers and find the record representing the correct coverage of dates.
Newspapers often change titles,
change publishers, and merge with other titles during their lifetimes.
Each change may result in a different record with different coverage,
but the "Preceding Title" field (780 in the MARC record) will take you to the record for the previous incarnation,
and the "Succeeding Title" field (785) will take you forward to the next. Records for microfilm
copies may be listed in an "Other Formats" note in the record for the paper copy and vice versa.
- Paper Sources to verify holdings and availability of historical newspaper titles:
- Missouri Newspapers on Microfilm at the State Historical Society of Missouri
MNL Reference Ref Z6945 .M6 23rd ed. 2001
- Underground Newspapers Microfilm Collection Table of Contents
MNL 1st Fl MicroRef PN4784.U53 B4 1968, MNL 1st Fl MicroRef Z6944.U5 B427 1963/72
- Newspaper Collection Compiled by: Alternative Press Syndicate
MNL 1st Fl MicroRef PN4888.U5 U52 1963/85
- Newspapers on Microfilm
MNL Reference Ref Z6951 .N63 1960
- Online Catalogs of libraries with comprehensive holdings of local and regional papers:
- Other Sources
Patents
- U.S.
Patents (www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html)
Search for patents issued in the U.S. since 1790. Full text available.
- Canadian Patents Database (http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/intro-e.html)
Search and retrieve over 1.5 million Canadian patent documents.
-
European Patent Office (ep.espacenet.com/search97cgi/s97_cgi.exe?Action=FormGen&Template=ep/en/quick.hts)
Search for patents issued in Europe and worldwide through the European
Patent Office.
Videos
There is almost always
more than one record in OCLC for a video - the format may have changed from
VHS to DVD, the item may be cataloged slightly differently, it may have been
produced at a different date or have a different distributor, but the audiovisual
content is the same. It is worth it to check!
Use all the limiters in OCLC to choose the correct format.
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Finding Library Holdings
If there is something you cannot
find in OCLC and think should exist, or if you have exhausted potential lenders
in OCLC, there are other places to look to find library holdings!
U.S. Holdings
- RLG Union Catalog
The Research Libraries Group's Union Catalog reflects the holdings of its
160 member institutions. While many of these items and holdings are also reflected in OCLC, many are not.
- Library
of Congress (catalog.loc.gov/)
Most of the Library of Congress's holdings are reflected in OCLC, but some
titles are not. Search by LCCN number.
- National Union Catalog,
call no. Z881.A1 U518 (2nd floor alcove)
Reflects holdings of many U.S. libraries from before 1976. A good way to
find and verify U.S. library holdings for older titles.
- For art books and exhibit
catalogs not cataloged in OCLC or RLIN, check:
International Holdings
and Foreign Language Titles
- British
Library Public Catalogue (blpc.bl.uk/)
Check BRI's catalog for anything published in the UK, even if OCLC does
not list the item or BRI as an owning library. It also doesn't hurt to check
for many international publications, especially items published in Europe
and India.
- COPAC (www.copac.ac.uk/copac/)
The union catalog of research libraries in the UK and Ireland. Includes
the British Library's holdings.
-
Universitat Karlsruhe's Virtual Catalog (www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/hylib/en/kvk.html)
Search union catalogs around Europe and worldwide from one search screen.
Wonderful for German libraries and other German-speaking nations, but also
includes other European and American union catalogs.
-
National Library of Australia (catalogue.nla.gov.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First)
For items published in Australia and New Zealand, try requesting from the
National Library of Australia (OCLC symbol AUT). If they do not own, they
can often refer us to an owning library. Find contact information for Australian
libraries at www.nla.gov.au/ilrs/
- Library of the University of Salamanca (sabus.usal.es/)
Fantastic resource for anything written in Spanish and other romance languages. This library has an online ILL request form and charges less than the Biblioteca Nacional de Espana.
- National Library of Spain (www.bne.es)
Photocopies cost 4 IFLA vouchers, but a good second choice for Spanish language materials.
- For Asian language
journal articles:
-
Union List of Japanese Serials and Newspapers (pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/uljsn/default.html)
Find holdings for Japanese language journals. Can search by title, keyword,
standard numbers.
-
Gateway Service Center of Chinese Academic Journal Publications (www.library.pitt.edu/gateway/)
This service provides articles from Chinese language journals that are
not otherwise available in the United States.
- University of
Hong Kong
If you cannot find other holdings, try requesting articles from Asian
language journals from the University of Hong Kong (OCLC symbol HUA).
- National Diet
Library
UMK is an authorized borrower from the National Diet Library in Japan,
and can request loans and copies through their web form.
- New
Chinese Romanization Guidelines (www.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/romcover.html)
From the Library of Congress's Pinyin Conversion Project. Use the Correspondence
of Wade-Giles to Pinyin (lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/romcover.html#7) chart to find alternate spellings for older
Chinese language titles that may have been cataloged before the conversion
to Pinyin and may not be cross-referenced to the Wade-Giles Romanization.
- Ask an East Asian Studies Librarian (askeasl.askvrd.org/index.asp?)
- NACSIS Webcat (webcat.nii.ac.jp/webcat_eng.html)
For Japanese library holdings. How to use: GIF (www.library.umass.edu/subject/easian/askeasl/GIFindex.html)
- University
of Illinois Slavic Reference Service (www.library.uiuc.edu/spx/srs.htm)
Refer requests for Slavic language materials (Russian, Polish, Hungarian,
etc.) to OCLC symbol UIU, or direct patrons to their reference service.
UIU has one of the largest collections of Slavic language materials in the
world, but, if they cannot supply, their Slavic reference librarians can
refer you or the patron to a potential supplier, in the U.S. and abroad.
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Institutional Repositories/Google Scholar
Some "grey literature" (conference papers and presentations, research papers) may be found full text online, deposited in institutional repositories. Search these full text scholarly sources using the following tools.
- Caltech CODA (library.caltech.edu/digital/)
Caltech’s institutional repository for faculty approved research results and other content supporting the mission of the Institute. Includes
electronic theses, technical reports, books, conference papers, and oral histories from the Caltech archives.
- CiteSeer (citeseer.ist.psu.edu/)
A digital library and search engine that focuses primarily on the literature in computer and information science,
hosted at Penn State's School of Information Sciences and
Technology. This tool
indexes PostScript and PDF
research articles on the Web, with value-added search features.
- Google Scholar (scholar.google.com/)
A Google search limited to scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Includes both full text and abstracted articles from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
- DLIST: Digital Library for Information Science and Technology (dlist.sir.arizona.edu/)
An Open Access, cross-institutional repository of full-text electronic resources in the domains of Library and Information Science (LIS) and Information Technology (IT).
- Institutional Archives Registry (archives.eprints.org/)
A registry of institutional repositories on a variety of subjects.
- METALIS (http://metalis.cilea.it/)
A metadata harvester for full text, online library and information science papers.
- OAIster (oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/)
A collection of freely available, previously difficult-to-access, academically-oriented digital resources that are easily searchable by anyone.
- Simon Fraser University Institutional Repository (http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/index.jsp)
Public accessibility to Simon Fraser University's record of scholarly information.
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Created by:
Amy Fry
Academic Librarian/Electronic Resources
Gustavus Adolphus College
Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library
http://homepages.gac.edu/~afry/HOME.htm
Last updated August 2005