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Lending to other libraries

We receive more than 33,000 lending requests each year from nearly 2,500 libraries, and we lend nearly 22,000 items. If your library would like to borrow materials from the University Libraries at Virginia Tech, please read the following policies.

Items owned by the Virginia Tech libraries are available for loan through normal interlibrary loan channels according to the policies described here. Please submit your requests through OCLC (please enter our symbol twice: VPI,VPI), DOCLINE, or standard ALA ILL form (sent to us by mail or FAX).

Mailing address

Interlibrary Loan Lending
Carol M. Newman Library
P.O. Box 90001
Kent St.
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, Virginia 24062-9001

Important numbers

• ILL Lending: 540-231-3044
• ILL Borrowing: 540-231-4269
• Odyssey: 216.54.119.163
• ARIEL (Receiving): 128.173.124.26

Basic policies

• We lend returnable items for 56 days (8 weeks).
• Renewals are NOT allowed.
• The billing process for non-returned items starts two months after the due date.
• International requests are handled on an individual basis. We do NOT lend books overseas.

Cost

Books

We lend all books without charge (free). Virginia Tech Interlibrary Loan does not charge to lend any returnable item in-state or out-of-state.

You can ask us to ship RUSH loans via UPS. Please supply your UPS account number if you wish to pay for RUSH delivery.

Articles

We fill without charge all article requests from in-state, non-commercial institutions and from ASERL libraries participating in the ASERL ILL Reciprocal Agreement.

All other organizations, including out-of-state academic libraries that do not participate in the ASERL ILL Reciprocal Agreement, as well as commercial and government entities, will be charged a flat fee of $15.00 per article. RUSH article requests are charged a flat fee of $15.00 per article.

International requests require prepayment of the $15.00 flat fee, as well as $0.07 a page for shipping.  Please contact Lending unit for more information at 540-231-3044 or ill@vt.edu.

What circulates through ILL?

Items that Interlibrary Loan can circulate:

• Books
• Theses/Dissertations prior to 1997 that have not been converted to scanned electronic format.
  [Virtually all theses and dissertations dated after 1/1/1997, and those pre-1997 theses and dissertations that have been selected for scanning, are available only in electronic format from Virginia Tech's Electronic Theses and Dissertations page. About 35% of the electronic theses and dissertations are NOT available outside of VPI and cannot be printed out for ILL purposes.]
• Audio-Visual Materials (subject to review by A-V staff)
• Software (subject to review by A-V staff)
• Scripts

Items that Interlibrary Loan can not circulate:

• Journals (including current issues)
• Newspapers (including film copies)
• Reference books
• New books
• College catalogs
• Maps
• AIAA binders (can copy papers if paper number is given)
• Most microfilm/microfiche

Electronic delivery

We prefer to send all articles electronically via Odyssey. If you are using stand-alone Odyssey, please be sure that your Odyssey address is included in your OCLC request. If you are still using Ariel, please supply your Ariel IP address on requests.