Interlibrary Loan Instructions for Research Assistants

• Please continue to submit ILL requests into ILLiad.
  • If you have not registered an account yet, please follow the tips found on How to Submit an ILL as an RA. (Please note that some portions of this guide will not be applicable while the Law Library and other libraries operate under business continuity).
• Copies/Scans for Articles/Pages: We will do our best to process requests and find other libraries to provide scans of pages out of periodicals, newspapers, books and other compilation works. Turnaround time may be longer than under normal circumstances (which was one to three business days).
  • If we are unable to find a library that can accommodate your request, you will be notified. You may then reach out to the Reference Desk to assist you in identifying an alternate source.
• Entire Books: Requests will be reviewed first for accessible ebook options. If none is available, and if there is an available print copy carried by the Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC), then you may be asked if you live in DC and are willing and safely able to use the Law Library's In-person Pickup Service. If you cannot, then the request will be forwarded to collection development team to consider alternate options.
  • If you need the entire book, or if the amount of pages needed out of the book exceeds Fair Use, and you cannot make use of the In-person Pickup Service, then you may submit a request for an ebook purchase instead of submitting a request through ILLiad.
• If the citation you requested through ILL cannot be obtained, please contact Reference Services if you would like help finding alternate, more readily available publications on the same subject.
• This Guide's content has been updated to reflect continuity, however, our library services continue to change.
• Please contact ILL Services with questions, law-ill@georgetown.edu.

• Always feel free to contact  Reference Services for assistance.
• Check the Law Library's catalog for:
  • Access to ebooks and ejournals.
  • Available print books at Law Library for in-person, contactless pickup: If a stack copy of the title you find in the catalog has a status as Available, and if you are willing and able to commute safely to the campus, then
    1. "Sign in" to your library account (https://gtownlaw.li/MyLibrary).
    2. Click on "Request for in-person pickup."
    3. Complete the form and "Send Request."
    • Full in-person pickup information may be found on the Student Resources for Fall 2020 guide.
  • Available print books at the local Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC), including main campus Lauinger Library: If a stack copy of the title you find in the catalog has a status as Available at a local WRLC library, and if you are willing and able to commute safely to the Law Center, then
    1. "Sign in" to your library account (https://gtownlaw.li/MyLibrary).
    2. Click on "Request from a Local Academic Library."
    3. Complete the form and "Send Request."
    • Full in-person pickup information may be found on the Student Resources for Fall 2020 guide.
    • The book will be checked out to you, not the faculty. If you have any questions on this, please contact Circulation Services, lawcirc@georgetown.edu.
• Casebooks & Study Aids:
  • Requests for scans of 10% or less of the content, or 40 pages or less, whichever is least, may be submitted for ILL, but only to meet the faculty's syllabus or research needs. For any such request, you must provide the name of the faculty for whom you are working in case we need to verify the citation with her or him.
  • Requests to obtain entire copies of casebooks, or excessive scans (>10% of content or >40 pages), cannot be processed via Interlibrary Loan. Such publications are not considered for institution-wide e-book licensing acquisition. Instead, please ask your faculty to request from the publisher a complimentary review copy. Typically, information on how to request a review copy is found on the publisher's website listing for the book. 
  • To access Gilberts, Nutshells, Concepts & Insights, Hornbooks, and Concise Hornbooks study aids, follow the Study Aids instructions in the Student Resources for Spring 2021 guide.
• Internet Archive: Provides one-hour loans of their digitized books. You may check-out their books by registering for a free, personal account. If a PDF download option is not provided with the check-out, then consider taking snippets of page images.
• If you happen to come across an article through a web search, try adding the following EZProxy prefix before the URL (i.e., before https://) to see if you have full-text access: http://proxygt-law.wrlc.org/login?url=
• If the citation you requested through ILL cannot be obtained, please contact Reference Services if you would like help finding alternate, more readily available publications on the same subject.

In response to COVID-19, most of the Law Library staff are working remotely. Other universities and their libraries have followed a similar safety protocols and have closed their buildings, reduced their on-site ILL staffing, or closed off access to their library's physical collections.

This means that

• No physical items can be borrowed via Interlibrary Loan. (Requests for entire books will be converted to e-book license acquisition if possible.)
• We cannot recommend that you visit a local library to make scans of materials yourself.
• It's more difficult to find libraries that may carry a needed title and happen to have the ILL capacity to make scans for us.
• Scans of citations that only exist in microfilm format (such as older newspapers) would be difficult, or maybe impossible, to obtain.
• Lengthy scanning requests (exceeding more than 10% of content, or 40 pages, whichever is least), which were not accepted under normal circumstances, will still not be considered by potential suppliers (these requests will be converted to e-license acquisitions if available).
• Other ILL offices, even if staffed, do not have the capacity to perform research on our behalf and cannot accommodate requests to peruse an entire work, or microfilm, in order to locate an obscure citation

Your patience and understanding are appreciated.