Interlibrary Loan

HOW TO PLACE AN ILL REQUEST

Determine availability of the item. Search SE catalog
ILL Book request form
ILL Article request form
If confirmation is not received within 24 hours, please verify the request by contacting Darryl Rainbolt or call (580) 745-2931.
Typically, printed books are received within two weeks of request; while digital articles can be received in one to three business days. Please indicate on your request form the latest date the material will be of value to you. Requests unfilled by the date indicated will be cancelled.
Please use your student/faculty email address when placing a request. A notice will be sent only to an SE email address when ILL materials arrive.

Important Considerations

Interlibrary Loan is an agreement between libraries which can be rescinded at any time. The lending library might set limitations or restrictions on loans.
If you want to extend the loan, please make the request at least 5 days before the book is due.
Interlibrary Loan staff reserves the right to refuse Interlibrary Loan service to any patron who might jeopardize our agreements by violating lending libraries’ stipulations.
Some items are difficult to acquire, and a few cannot be acquired. Foreign publications, items long out-of-print, and recently published items are especially problematic. Plan your research to allow additional time to acquire these items.
Community card holders may not use Interlibrary Loan. Their community libraries will provide Interlibrary Loan services.

Copyright Law

The Federal copyright law 94-553, enacted January 1, 1978, has placed a limit on the number of photocopies of articles that the SE library may request from recent periodical issues, i.e. those published in the last five years. In most cases this law will not affect our ability to request the materials that you need, but the Interlibrary Loan department reserves the right to refuse to process requests, which in our opinion, violates copyright law. On these occasions, Interlibrary Loan staff will provide patrons with information on how they might acquire the desired materials through sources other than Interlibrary Loan.

Copyright Law FAQs

What is the public domain?

Public domain is the legal name given to a work that is not protected by any intellectual property rules such as copyright, patent or trademark, trade secrets, or contract. In other words, anyone may copy or use the work freely. In the copyright arena, the term is most commonly applied when copyright protection no longer pertains to a work, as in “then the work enters the public domain.”

How do I find out if a work is in the public domain?

This site contains one of the best charts for figuring out when or whether a work is available in the public domain. Please see Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States, by Peter Hirtle.

What is Fair Use? Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as for commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship.

Is my use a “fair use”?

The Fair Use Checklist is a tool available from Cornell University designed to help you determine whether a particular use is covered under “Fair Use.” The American Library Association also has a Fair Use Evaluator you can use.

We’re an educational institution, so aren’t all uses fair use?

No! A fair use analysis would be the basic rubric, adding “transformative use” considerations to the existing four factors that exist now in the law: nature of the medium, intended use of the work, amount, market impact. Because the intended use is by an educational institution, that works in our favor – but it is only one factor in a more complicated analysis.

We’re an educational institution so no one would sue us, would they?

Content owners frequently target higher education for potential copyright infringement litigation, so we must be more rather than less vigilant in treating copyright in such a way as to maximize the use of information for our missions while remaining within legal boundaries.

Fair use and YouTube videos

To determine if a work is still under copyright protection go to the American Library Association’s Copyright Genie.