Inter Library Loan – What is It?
The term ‘Inter Library Loan’ very popular in the Library and Information Science field. Inter Library loan means sharing of your own library resources with other libraries of the same localities of another part of the world on demand, when needed by the users of other libraries within a cooperative agreement/ venture. And you have an opportunity to collect materials like books, journal articles from other libraries connected with your Inter Library loan network.
Inter Library Loan is a process through which one library requests material from or supplies own library material to another libraries. Your libraries Inter Library Loan department can borrow from or lend library materials to other local, state, national and international libraries.
It is very important for small as well as big libraries, because of;- Tremendous increase of resources.
- Information explosion.
- Lack of space in libraries.
- Lack of library fund.
- Ever expending demand of the library user.
- Changing behavior of the information need.
- To satisfy your library users.
Process to serve Inter Library loan: Libraries can serves resource sharing through inter library loan by;
- Email;
- Manually;
- Through web upload;
- Through DVD/CD;
- Others.