Georgetown Law
Georgetown Law Library

Interlibrary Loan FAQs

Answers to the most commonly asked questions about ILL.

What is Interlibrary Loan (ILL)?

This service provides eligible Law Center patrons loans of printed or physical publications, or copies or scans out of a large body or series of works, not owned by or accessible through the Law Library, local academic loan services, library databases or library collections.

This ILL service can be used to obtain materials from other libraries that you need for your Law Center course work, class paper, note writing, journal source collecting, scholarly research, general interests, dissertation research, Research Assistant work, or work-for-hire projects.

Check What Can Be Obtained? for more details.

Who is Eligible for ILL Service at the Law Center?

This ILL service is only available to current Law Center faculty, students, staff and visiting scholars who have book borrowing privileges at the Law Library. There are no fees to use this ILL service.

Be Careful: If you are a current Law Center faculty, staff or student, do not mistakenly use the ILL service at Georgetown University's main campus Lauinger Library. If you do resort to that campus library's services, any ILL requests facilitated by Lauinger Library on your behalf falls within their policies and outside of this Law Library's oversight. Lauinger Library's ILL policies and this Law Library's ILL policies are not interchangeable. ILL transactions that Lauinger Library has processed cannot be transferred to the Law Library.

Law Center Visiting Researchers are not eligible for this Law Library's ILL services and should use their home institution libraries to obtain materials not held by the Law Library. Visiting Researchers may request a Law Library study carrel to which Law Library books may be checked out.

Alumni, Friends of the Law Library, and those who have paid a Law Library Membership to gain library building access are not eligible to use this Law Library's ILL service to obtain materials not held by the Law Library. This ILL service is also not a mechanism by which an alumni, Friend or paying Member may borrow a Law Library material. Such visitors must obtain ILL services through their home law firm, agency, institution, or public library.

Georgetown University non-law faculty and staff (who teach or have offices on the Law Center campus, e.g., 500 First St.), and Georgetown University non-law students (who visit or have classes at the Law Center campus, but are not enrolled as law students), are not eligible for the Law Library's ILL service. These university members must use main campus library's ILL services. This Law Library ILL service is not the mechanism to borrow Law Library materials. Georgetown University non-law faculty, staff and students should consult main campus Lauinger Library on how to borrow the Law Library circulating materials.

This Law Library ILL service is not the service through which the faculty, staff or student from the Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC) or any local academic institution can borrow Law Library materials. Use your home library's consortium service.

Those from the general public must use their home library's ILL service to obtain loans of materials that may be held by the Law Library.