What is interlibrary loan?
Libraries come in all shapes and sizes with varied collections of items that reflect the people who most often visit that library. Librarians work pretty hard to track book requests and how often each book is checked out, along with following the kinds of books that people ask for. No librarian wants to turn away a patron without being able to help them get the books they want. With a system of interconnected library catalogs, people can borrow books from other libraries if theirs doesn’t have what they are looking for. This is a service used widely at public libraries all over the country in order to better serve patrons, especially at smaller libraries with smaller budgets. For OhioLINK, this service allows you to request and check out a book from whichever of the 115 affiliated academic libraries has your item available – and it costs you nothing!
ILL Process
OhioLINK Catalog
Primo Discovery will now search both the Terra Catalog and the catalogs and databases of most of the academic institutions in Ohio. The OhioLINK library catalog page is a search tool that you can use to look for materials that aren’t available right here at Terra. This catalog search can access the library catalog listings for 115 libraries from across the state, greatly expanding your options for finding what you need from more than 38 million items. This can be used for general topic nonfiction books, novels, or in some cases textbooks. Look to the next section for an explanation for how to get items you want to borrow from somewhere else sent to us.
Searching
In the main search bar, you can type in an author, title, or subject and click on the magnifying glass. This will activate options for the scope of your search: Terra Library, OhioLINK, or research databases.
