ILL Policies

Interlibrary Loan (ILL) services are available to currently enrolled USI students and university faculty/staff.  All ILL requestors must have a current MyUSI account in order to be authenticated in ILLiad, the ILL management software used by Rice Library. Only items not currently owned by Rice Library should be ordered through Interlibrary Loan. 

All ILL requests must be submitted via ILLiad.  Most requests are processed within three working days after the ILL Unit receives them, but requests that require extensive searching may take up to five days.

Students with overdue materials or library fines in excess of $5.00 will not be able to use ILL until fines/overdues are cleared.  Faculty members must return overdue materials before requesting additional ILLs.

Requests occasionally require borrowing from an out-of-network library or incur copyright fees. In these cases, students, current and retired faculty members, and staff members are asked to pay the fee before it is processed. ILL users will be contacted via their USI email account when a request requires payment. Upon payment, the ILL request will immediately be processed. Fees may be paid at the Circulation Desk or a check may be sent through the mail directly to the ILL Unit.

Graduate and undergraduate students may submit up to 75 ILL requests per academic year without paying a processing fee. Fall, Spring, and Summer sessions 1-3 constitute one academic year. Each student request in excess of the yearly limit will be assessed a $5.00 processing fee, which must be paid prior to processing the ILL request.  This is in addition to the occasional lending/copyright fees (see above point).  Current faculty and staff members can submit unlimited requests throughout each academic year.

Books and audiovisual materials must be picked up at the Checkout desk within 14 days. They are returned to the lending library after 14 days.

Some libraries place restrictions on materials such as, "library use only", "no renewals", "no photocopies".  The ILL Unit will notify patrons in advance if there are restrictions.

Overdue ILL notices are sent by email every Wednesday. Before the item is overdue, patrons receive a courtesy notice indicating its upcoming due date. The first overdue notice is sent when the item is 1-7 days overdue, and the second notice is sent when the item is 8-14 days overdue.  At this point, a non-refundable $20.00 processing fee per overdue item is also added to the patron’s library account.  Patron receives a letter containing the notice of fines/fees.  In addition, the patron’s Banner account is blocked, and the patron will be unable to register for USI classes.  All of the patron's Rice Library privileges are blocked until the ILL item is returned/replaced and all associated fees cleared.  If the patron does not return the item, the replacement fee is added to their library account, and subsequently receives another notice of fines/fees. The ILL Unit will pay the lending library for replacement of the item. 

Still have questions? Contact the ILL office: (812)465-1683, libill@usi.edu.

Note: Requests for textbooks are not processed.