Lone Star College - Montgomery Library
Inter-Library Loan Forms

Do I Need One, and Which Do I Need?

Inter-Library loans (ILLs) come in two varieties in our system. To avoid confusion, we'll use "Extra-Consortium" loans to designate requests for those circulating items and articals coming from outside the Lone Star College System consortium (that is, all the LSCS libraries and all Montgomery and Harris County Public libraries), and we'll use "Consortium" loans for those borrowed from within the system.* Consortium loans are available online to all card-holding students, professors, staff, and community users, assuming the card is current and activated. Extra-Consortium loans, however, are provided only to students, professors, and staff. And a further distinction—while Extra-Consortium loan forms serve for both articles and circulating items, Consortium loan forms are only used for requests from periodicals; circulating items from within the consortium are readily available another way, as described below.

Circulating Items:
The Catalog

Any circulating item held in the libraries of the LSCS and the Montgomery and Harris County public libraries (the consortium) may be requested, should you find that the item is not available at your home library, in the following manner:
  1. Search for the item from the online catalog.
  2. Select from among the results by clicking the title or "show details."
  3. Find beneath the record the "Copy/Holding" information to determine whether this item is available at your home library; if it is not, but is located at any other of our consortium libraries, click "Request FIRST AVAILABLE COPY of this item."
  4. Type in your library bar code number and PIN.
  5. Indicate where you want the item sent and click "Request."

Students, faculty, and staff, having searched the online catalog without success, may request items from outside the consortium by using the online Extra-Consortium Loan Form.

Articles from Periodicals:
The Databases

The consortium subscribes to numerous databases containing hundreds of thousands of articles from journals, magazines, newspapers, and the like. While this is not, strictly speaking, a "loan," these are our most comprehensive holdings and the best "first stop" for finding articles and information therein. Access to these is available to anyone searching from campus. In addition, students, professors, and staff have remote access via their activated library bar code. Searching here first will give you instant access and may preclude the need for filling out a form:

  • If you are searching for information (that is, by keyword, subject, etc.) and know the title of the database you prefer, then choose it from one of the pull down menus beneath "Databases by Title." If you do not know which database you should use, survey the "Databases by Subject" table for the most appropriate choices.
  • If you are searching for a particular article and want to know whether that article is available via database, then choose "A—Z List of LSCS's Electronic Journals" (found also on the "Article Databases" page). Searching from the A—Z List indicates which publications are available. If your results indicate that the publication is held in one of our databases and the date range encompasses the title you seek, then click the database title and proceed.

Articles from Periodicals:
The Catalog

If you are unsuccessful finding your article using the databases, then you may, indeed, need a Consortium Loan Form. Here's how to proceed:

  1. If you know the publication and date of your article title, go to the online catalog and select "Browse Search" from the green strip at the top.
  2. Type in the publication title in the "Serial Title Browse" box near the bottom.
  3. If you see your publication title on the results page, click the title.
  4. The subsequent page will indicate which of our libraries has this publication and the date range of their possessions. If your article appears therein, but it is not in your library, then fill out and submit the online Consortium Loan Form.

Students, professors, and staff have an additional resource should they not find what they need in our databases and catalog as decribed above. If this is the case, fill in and submit the Extra-Consortium Loan Form in the "Periodical or Newspaper Request" section at the bottom.

Help

If you are still unsure how to go about getting what you want, call the reference desk (936 273 7390) or email us.

*As of the publication of this page, these ILL form names have not been agreed upon by the LSCS; as a result, the forms you'll be directed to may not bear the same names, but will serve the same function.