Services & Policies - Fall 2005

Electronic Document Delivery of Interlibrary Loan Articles

"If I order an article today, how long will it take to get here?" is the question most frequently asked before someone requests an article on interlibrary loan. "Not as long as it used to take," is the answer you will get now that the Weinberg Memorial Library is using a new Electronic Document Delivery (EDD) service to deliver interlibrary loan articles. Although the library charges students $1.50 for each interlibrary loan article ordered, there will not be an additional charge for this new delivery service. During June and July, the Interlibrary Loan Department tested EDD with the cooperation of several students and faculty and received favorable reviews.
 
How does this service work? Requests for articles are sent to the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Department via the electronic request form on the library's Web site. When the request is received, the ILL staff searches to see where the article is available, either from another library or from a document supplier. This part of the request process has not changed. However, once the article is received, how the article is delivered to you has changed. You no longer need to come to the library to pick up your article. When an article is received, it will be placed on a Web server where it can be retrieved 24/7 from any computer with Internet access.
 
How do you get to the article? When your ILL article is available, an e-mail notice will be sent to your University of Scranton e-mail account. You will either need to check this account for messages or redirect your University e-mail to the account that you do use. The e-mail will contain a clickable link that takes you to a Login page. To login, you must enter your complete e-mail address and personal identification number (PIN). Each person will be assigned a unique case sensitive PIN that will be included in the e-mail. An Interlibrary Loan fee of $1.50 per article will be place on a student's library account at the time this e-mail notification is sent. This takes you to a page with a link for the article. The EDD system will automatically remove a document after it has been viewed 3 times or after 7 days, whichever comes first.
 
After the article is open on your computer, you can read it, save it, or print it before it is automatically deleted. Or, you might want to delete an article after you have saved and/or printed it, especially if you have requested several articles. The usual copyright restrictions apply to articles you receive via the EDD system. You may be liable for copyright infringement if you make a request for, or later use, a photocopy or reproduction for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research.
 
Eligible students and faculty who have registered for distance learning services may also have articles from newspapers, magazines, or journals to which the library subscribes that are not available online delivered to their desktops. Students are charged $1.50 per article Document Delivery fee at the time the e-mail delivery notification is sent.
 
If you experience any problems retrieving your article, please contact the Interlibrary Loan at the Weinberg Library by phone at (570) 941-4003 or by e-mail <interlibrary-loan@scranton.edu
Pride, Passion, Promise: Experience Our Jesuit Tradition