We will make every attempt to track down the materials your request and we are grateful for reciprocal relationships with libraries from around the world. Some materials and material types are more difficult to obtain and the best gift you can give us is time. Here are a few item types and situations that can be tricky. 

Audio-Visual Materials

In our experience, quite a few libraries do not loan audio-visual materials. These include DVDs, Audio CDS, Books on CD, However, we are happy to try. Because of the time and extra effort involved in locating a library that will loan them, these types of materials often take longer to fill, so please plan accordingly. duPont Library does not circulate our own LP (Vinyl) records and successfully requesting LPs through interlibrary loan can be very difficult. Due to copyright and technology restrictions, we cannot request digital music, films, audiobooks, etc. Please contact our Acquisitions Dept. acquisitions@sewanee.edu for more information about the purchase of these materials. 

Entire e-books

Due to publisher restrictions and copyright, it is very rare that we can successfully request an entire e-book through interlibrary loan. The few libraries that can currently provide entire e-books will usually provide it as a PDF through our Article Exchange software or by email. If we are unable to obtain a requested e-book, we will notify you and provide more information about requesting the purchase of this book. 

Brand New Materials 

duPont Library does not lend materials through interlibrary loan that have been cataloged within the last 3 months. Many other libraries also follow this policy and do not lend materials that have been purchased within the last 3-6 months (especially very popular materials). We will try our best to successfully request recently-published materials through ILL, but please note that it might take longer to find a library with a lendable copy. We might also suggest that a purchase by duPont Library might be possible and provide you with that information. 

Materials owned by duPont Library but are currently checked out, missing,  or on Course Reserve

We normally do not request materials through interlibary loan that are owned by duPont Library but are currently checked out to another patron. As long as the item is due back in a reasonable time, we will suggest that you ask the Circulation Department to place a hold on it for you. If the item is not checked out, but you cannot find it on the shelf (or if our copy is listed as "Missing" in the catalog), we can try and request it for you through interlibrary loan. On the request form, there is a Notes field where you can let us know that you were unable to find duPont's copy on the shelf. 

Multiple recent journal articles from the same journal title 

Fair Use Copyright guidelines will only allow us to request up to 5 articles from any one journal title published within the last 5 years per calendar year. After the fifth article, we must pay copyright fees for each additional article (in addition to any fees charged by the lending library). For example from Jan 2021-Dec 2021, we can only request up to 5 articles (without paying copyright fees) from issues of The Paris Review published between 2016-2021. Our limit would reset on Jan 1st, 2022. Many times this happens when a special topic issue is published by a particular journal and every article in the issue concerns a particular topic.  In cases like these, we can provide more information about requesting a purchase of this particular issue.