Ordering Books Not Available at Your Campus

Books and articles not available at your campus location can be obtained in one of two ways.  Items at another Shorter library can be sent to the campus where you study.  This is known as an intercampus loan.  Most intercampus loans are fulfilled within the week. 

When Shorter College borrows an item on your behalf from a distant library, we call this an interlibrary loan (ILL).  Interlibrary loans can take from one to several weeks to complete.  The loan period for ILL books generally ranges from 2 to 3 weeks, depending upon the policy of the lending library.  Articles can also be obtained through interlibrary loan; the lending library simply copies the article and sends it to us.  You do not have to return photocopies of articles.

When your intercampus or interlibrary loan materials arrive in the library, you will be contacted by a campus representative.  Pick up your materials from Michael Wilson at the North Atlanta Campus, from Ann Dabrowski at the Lawrenceville Campus, or from Bob Coleman at the Riverdale Campus.

To Request a Book Through Intercampus or Interlibrary Loan

1. First, perform a search for the book in the Shorter College Libraries Catalog. 

2. If you find an entry for the book, go to the Request Forms page and choose the appropriate form to request the book.

3. Fill out the form completely, then click the "submit" button at the bottom of the page.  If available, your materials should arrive within two working days.

To Request an Article Not Available from Galileo through Intercampus or Interlibrary Loan

1. From the library home page, follow the link to the list of Periodicals at the Rome Library.  This is a list of all periodicals held by the Shorter libraries.

2. Use the list of periodicals to determine whether or not the Shorter libraries own the publication in which your article is published.  For example, if you were looking for an article published in the journal Educational Leadership in 1994, you would first scroll down to the entry for that publication, which looks like this:

   **EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP: 1943- (*MFLM 1971-1989, MFC 1990-1996) (See GALILEO) 

   This annotation tells us that Shorter has paper volumes of this journal beginning in 1943, that we have the volumes from 1971 to 1989 on microfilm (miniature photographic copy arranged on film that is wound on spools), that we have the volumes from 1990 to 1996 on microfiche (the same as microfilm, except on flat sheets), and that some volumes may be available on Galileo.  When determining ownership, be sure to check to see that Shorter has not only the journal title, but also the volume for the particular year in which your article was published.  In this example, we see that Shorter holds Educational Leadership for 1994 in microfiche; had our article been published before 1943 or after 1996, we would have had to look for it at another library.

3. When you have completed Step 2, go to the drop-down menu near the upper right hand corner of the page and choose Request Forms and Surveys. 

4. If your research in Step 2 indicated both that Shorter held the journal title in question and that the article you need falls within the date range of our holdings for that title, then choose the second link, Request a Book/Article (Including DANTES Materials) from Another Shorter College Campus Library.

5. If Shorter does not own that particular title and/or does not own the volume for the particular year in which the desired article was published, then choose the first link, Place an Interlibrary Loan Request for Articles/Books.

Tips on Filling Out the Forms

• Whichever form you use, please fill it out completely.  It is very important that we have all of the requested information; the more we know about your item, the better chance we have of finding it.

• The Name field is required, as is the Affiliation field.  Most borrowers will have either student or faculty affiliation. 

• Be sure to indicate to which campus you would like your materials sent in the Deliver To field. 

• You must answer Yes to the copyright question in order for your request to be processed. 

• For book requests, you may ignore the Volume, Issue, and Pages (i.e., beginning page to ending page) fields, but be sure to complete the Book Author, Book Title, Date, and Publisher/Edition fields.  The Article/Chapter Author and Article/Chapter Title fields may also be disregarded unless you are requesting that a chapter be copied out of a book. 

• For article requests, you may ignore the Book Author and Publisher/Edition fields, but be sure to complete the Journal Title, Article Author, Article Title, Volume, Issue, Date, and Pages (i.e., beginning page to ending page) fields. 

• Also note that the Interlibrary Loan Request Form has more fields than the Intercampus form.  Since distant libraries sometimes charge for lending to us, it is important to know the Maximum cost you wish to pay.  Please do not leave this field blank.  It's fine if you wish to pay nothing; if so, simply enter a zero in the field.

• It can be useful to know the Source of Citation in case we need to verify it.  If you obtained your citation from Galileo, please let us know the specific database from which you obtained your citation (keep in mind that Galileo is not a database in itself but is rather a collection of databases).

•  The ISBN (International Standard Book Number), the ISSN (International Standard Serial Number), and the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) numbers can often help us find items more quickly than we might be able to otherwise.  Putting them on an Interlibrary Loan request is like putting a ZIP code on a letter.  Most Galileo databases include these numbers in their citations.