Effective immediately, Himmelfarb Library will now provide 30 free interlibrary requests for the year for all GW Nursing, GWSPH, and SMHS patrons between January and December! The allowed amount will reset at the beginning of each fiscal year (July 1 to June 30). We hope the change simplifies the service for users and allows them to maximize their use of Documents2Go’s interlibrary loan service!
Why the limit?
Due to the expensive nature of research articles, we are unable to lift the current limit to the number of allowable free requests. We will do everything we are able to obtain your article in a timely fashion.
Why the limit?
Articles are normally delivered within 24-72 hours. If your article takes longer than a week to receive, feel free to contact us at mlbdoc@gwu.edu to receive an update on your request.
Are there any other costs?
If you need to receive your requested article within 24 hours of creating it, you may designate your request as a “rush” request. Rush requests incur a $10 fee. After your acknowledgment of the additional cost, we will try to obtain your article within 24 hours. In the case that we are unable to obtain the article within the allotted time, you will not be charged.
How can I submit requests? Access Documents2Go then log in using your GW User ID and password. For accounts created before May 22, 2022, your GW UserID is the portion of your email address prior to the “@.” For accounts created after May 22, 2022, your GW UserID is your GWID (G#). If you are unable to access your account or have any additional questions about our Interlibrary Loan service let us know by contacting mlbdoc@gwu.edu
ILL. CLS. Interlibrary Loan. Consortium Loan Service. Have you heard these terms before? If you have, awesome! If not, let us introduce you to them! We understand that the acronyms may be confusing, and want to take the time to share more about what these two library services can offer you.
Borrowing from other libraries
Interlibrary Loan (ILL) and Consortium Loan Service (CLS) provide materials that the library does not currently have access to such as medical articles, book chapters, and books to our GW medical, health sciences, nursing and public health students, staff and faculty members. We understand that your research is important, and will do everything that we can to provide the books and articles that you may need for your studies and research.
Consortium Loan Service
Consortium Loan Service, or CLS for short, is a free service that allows our users to request books that are available within the Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC). What this means is that if Georgetown (for example) has a book that you would like to borrow, CLS makes it possible to borrow their copy. One benefit of borrowing books through CLS is that this is the fastest way for us to borrow books from other libraries within the D.C. area as materials arrive usually within 2-3 days after the request has been placed. We rely on a courier service for the expedited delivery of books within business days. For detailed information about our CLS service, check out our Consortium Loan Service Guide!
How do I place a CLS request?
Search for the book you are looking for in the Himmelfarb catalog advanced search. Make sure that Articles + GW & Consortium Catalog is selected.
Under “How to get it” click Sign In. Use your GW Net ID & password to login.
Under “How to get it” click “Consortium Loan Service Request”
Specify where you would like to pick the book up, at the Himmelfarb library, or at our Ashburn location.
Interlibrary Loan
If you are looking for an article or book that is not available in our catalog or through CLS, Interlibrary Loan (ILL), is a great option! Through ILL, we can request books and articles from libraries across the country on your behalf. Articles normally take 24-72 hours to be delivered. Books may take longer depending on how far away the lending library is from D.C. For detailed information about our ILL service, check out our Interlibrary Loan and Documents2Go guide!
Log in using your GW Net ID & password. Make sure to leave out any ‘@gwu.edu’ part of your net ID. You will not be able to access your account if you include it.
To make a request:
Find the “Make a new request” menu item.
Select the type of resource you want to request : article, book, or book chapter.
Please be as detailed as possible in order to help us find the exact resource you need. Include the journal title, article title, page number, volume, or year, and author.
Click the ‘Submit Request’ when you are ready to place your request.
Once you’ve placed your request, we will do our best to find the resource from another library.
Once we receive a PDF of the requested article, or book chapter, you will receive an email notification informing you that you can access your article through your Documents2Go portal. Keep in mind, these articles disappear after 30 days on your account, so download it if you want permanent access to the material!
If the item you requested is a physical book, once we receive the item, you will receive a notification informing you that the item is available for pick up at the Himmelfarb Circulation Desk, or at the Ashburn Library.
Does it cost money?
CLS requests are free! As for ILL, we offer 15 requests for free to all GW medical, health sciences, nursing and public health students, staff and faculty members from the dates of January 1st to July 1st. Afterwards, we offer another free 15 starting from July 1st, to the end of December. This amount resets each calendar year. Any additional requests over the initial 15 will incur an additional $10.00 charge. We will contact you to confirm any charges, which you can deny or accept. Rush requests, which guarantees article delivery within 24 hours, will cost an additional $10. In the event that we are unable to fulfill a rush request within 24 hours, you will not be charged.
How long does it take to receive my article or book?
In most cases, we should be able to provide an article to you within 3 to 6 days. Depending on availability and rarity of the article, it may take us longer to receive a PDF for your request. If a request is taking longer than expected to fulfill, we will contact you.
Books generally take anywhere from one to two weeks to receive, depending on the library’s location that ships the book to us, and the shipping method they use. Because of the unpredictable nature of book requests, we would recommend using CLS whenever possible to ensure a more timely arrival of any book requests.
My CLS request was cancelled, what should I do now?
If the book you are looking for is not available through CLS, the request will be cancelled. When this happens, we recommend submitting your request through our Documents2Go portal.
If you have additional questions, or want to better understand the difference between these two borrowing services that Himmelfarb has to offer, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at mlbdoc@gwu.edu.
Ever try to access an ebook in the Himmelfarb Library collection and get the message “Sorry, this ebook is in use”? Ever wonder why we can’t just scan entire books in our collection to create an electronic copy? Ever get frustrated by a broken article link in Blackboard and wonder why they couldn’t just upload a PDF? While these seem like questions about different systems, they all come down to the same thing - copyright.
When a library acquires an ebook, they don’t actually own the ebook - they license a copy from the publisher. The same thing happens when you “purchase” an ebook from Amazon. And much like Amazon ebooks come with publisher restrictions in place to prevent piracy, library ebooks have their own limits established by the publishers. These include everything from limits to how many pages you can save or print to how many people can access the ebook at once. If you’re trying to access one of our eBooks and get a message that someone else is using the book, usually if you wait 15-20 minutes and try again you’ll be able to get in.
As for scanning entire physical books to create our own electronic copies, that would violate copyright laws. However, when working with copyrighted materials in academia we are allowed a little more flexibility thanks to the fair use doctrine. Essentially, fair use allows us to use copyrighted material without explicit permission from the copyright holder. The fair use doctrine even explicitly mentions educational purposes as one of the main reasons it exists. When it comes to scanning physical books, generally the fair use guidelines state that you can scan one chapter or less than 10% of the book. This allows us to take advantage of our InterLibrary Loan system to the fullest, so you can access chapters from books not in our collection.
Fair use is also why we provide durable links to articles in Blackboard rather than full PDFs. Reproducing the full PDF would require your professor to obtain permission from the copyright holder. Linking to the article in Himmelfarb’s collection doesn’t. If you ever run into a broken link in Blackboard, get in touch with your professor and let us know at himmelfarb@gwu.edu so we can update the link.
