Mechanical Engineering Research Guide

Get Items the Library Doesn't Own with ILL

You can get access to books and articles not owned by the University Library by placing an interlibrary loan (ILL) request. This service is free of charge for students, faculty, and staff. Please see ILL/DD homepage and FAQs for more information about this service.

Articles, which are delivered as downloadable PDFs, may arrive in as little as 2-hours but books are shipped by mail and you should expect delivery time to be in days, not hours.

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How to Order Articles

How to Order Books

Another Option: LibKey Nomad

How to Order Articles

The easy way:

1. Search for an article in a database and click the ISU Library link.
   This may be a text link, or a "View It@ISU" or "Get It@ISU" button (pictured above).
2. On the next screen you will see a lot of information. Look for the section labeled "If full text and other holdings not available" and click the red Interlibrary Loan link.
3. Sign into InterLibrary Loan with your ISU Net-ID and password.
   • If this is your first time using ILL then you will need to complete your profile first. You may need to reclick the link in step 2 after completing the profile step.
4. Review the form, which has been filled out for you, and click Submit Request. You'll receive an email when your article is ready.

Another Way:

1. Sign into Interlibrary Loan using your ISU Net-ID and password.
   • If this is your first time using ILL then you will need to complete your profile.
2. Click New Request in the red page header. Then choose Articles.
3. Fill out the form with as much information as possible.
4. Review the form and click Submit Request. You'll receive an email when your article is ready.

Get your ILL article FAST!

• Include as much information as possible, especially if you think it may be hard to track down.
• Include the publishing journal's ISSN in the request. You can usually locate an ISSN on the journal's homepage.
• Include the article's DOI. DOIs all start with "10." and may be included in citations, on the publishing journal's website, and in databases.

How to Order Books

1. Search for the book you want to order in WorldCat.
2. Click the title of the book you want to order to open the record for that book.
3. On the right side of the page, click on View Access Options and choose Get It@ISU.
4. Wait for the ISU Library page to load. And then scroll down to the yellow bar section for How to Get It.
5. If you are not already signed into Okta, click on Sign-In first. Otherwise click on Request Book from Interlibrary Loan.

Note: The form should already have information about the book filled in for you! Simply scroll to the bottom of the page and click Submit Request to complete the process. You'll get an email when the book is ready for pickup.

Another Option: LibKey Nomad

LibKey Nomad is a browser extension that simplifies and streamlines access to the ISU Library's subscription resources. Adding this extension to your browser enables one-click access to full text of articles from publisher pages, PubMed, Google, Wikipedia, and more, with no need to start at the library website. If direct access is not available, it automatically loads and fills out the Interlibrary Loan request form for you.