By Sherrie DeMartino, Branch Manager of the Carroll Valley Library
If there is an item that you would like to borrow from the library, and you can’t find it in the catalog, don’t despair! Before you order it online, there are several other options that we can explore to attempt to get the item for you. We first try Interlibrary Loan. This is a resource-sharing transaction between libraries where they lend material to each other on a short-term basis.
Public libraries in Pennsylvania are assigned to one of 29 District Library Center areas. Adams and York Counties are in the same district, so we work closely with the York County Library System, which has 13 branches. If we don’t own the item you are looking for, we check York’s catalog. If they have it, we can request to borrow it for you. The Gettysburg branch of our library system receives delivery every weekday from York County. The requested item would be sent from York County, delivered to Gettysburg, and sent via our delivery van to whichever branch is most convenient for you.
If we still cannot find the item in either York or Adams Counties, our next option is to check Access Pennsylvania, which is a catalog that contains the holdings of over 1,400 institutions in our state. Your request will be sent to our Interlibrary Loan librarian, who will try to find it in the Access PA catalog. If she finds it, she submits a request to borrow the item, and the lending library mails it to Gettysburg. Your item is then sent in the delivery van to your chosen branch.
The request form for an Interlibrary Loan item can be found on our website at https://www.adamslibrary.org/form/request-ill-form.
Most libraries do not lend out new material. There is usually a 6-month to one-year restriction on new items. If you would like to request an item that has been released in the past year, you can ask the library to purchase it to add to our collection. When you fill out this form, we look at reviews of the item and also see whether it’s part of a series that we own. If it looks like a good fit for our collection, we will purchase a copy and put a hold on the item for you. This form can be found at https://www.adamslibrary.org/form/purchase-request.
It is very nice having Interlibrary Loan resources at our disposal! It’s not often that we have to tell patrons that we can’t get an item that they request due to this wonderful resource-sharing program.
We also have a lot of great programs going on this fall, so be sure to Pick up a “What’s Happening” brochure at a branch near you or view it online at https://www.adamslibrary.org/media/743. Hope to see you soon!
