Interlibrary Loan
Literature from Other Libraries
Use the interlibrary loan services to order books or journal articles that you cannot find in Aachen/Jülich. In particular, media that are already somewhat older, out of print, or thematically very specific can be obtained quickly and easily via interlibrary loan.
Contact
> flbibliothek.fh-aachen.de
> T +49. 241. 6009 52059
> F +49. 241. 6009 52287
Information on Interlibrary Loan for ...
Ordering
What may only be ordered with certain restrictions
- E-books and printouts of journal articles that are subject to licence
- Bachelor's, Master's, Diplom, and Magister theses
- Standards
- Books and journal articles that can be borrowed from, or are available at, the RWTH Aachen library. (Possible for users at the Jülich campus; please consult us if necessary).
What may not be ordered
- Loose-leaf publications and reference works for the purpose of lending (ordering sections is possible)
- Hobby and entertainment literature
- Media that cost less than €15 in bookshops
- Books published before 1900 or requiring special protection for other reasons
Helpful hint: Older books with expired protective rights are often legally available free of charge in digitalised form, e.g. via
Internet Archive
Central Directory of Digitised Printed Works (ZVDD) - Articles from newspapers and so-called newsstand magazines (cf. UrhG §60e)
Helpful hint: Zeit.PunktNRW - Historical Newspapers from North Rhine-Westphalia - Oversized media
- CD-ROMs, BluRay discs and DVDs
- Complete issues and entire volumes of journals (article orders possible)
Costs
For each successful order of articles or books, the lending library and the responsible interlibrary loan office receive a lump sum that is agreed upon. The library will pay this token fee for you. According to the interlibrary loan regulations, up to 20 pages of an article order are covered by this. It is possible that the library that owns the item will stop the copying process after exactly 20 pages if there is no declaration of cost coverage. For this reason, you should set the cost coverage field to €8.00 (lowest value that is not zero) in case of more extensive documents. As a rule, libraries charge 5-10 cents per additional page.
Even if we obtain copies of standards or printouts of journal articles (e.g. ScienceDirect) for you via fee-based document delivery services such as TIBOrder or SUBITO-Doc, the library will bear the costs. However, if you request express delivery or forms of delivery for which surcharges apply, these additional costs will be passed on to you following consultation.
Interlibrary Loan Instructions
Ordering Articles - Starting Point "Thematic Search"
You have found what you were looking for. According to the document type, it is a journal or an article from it, respectively. Before you check the availability with "How do I get to it", follow all the links provided to make sure. It is possible that the full text of a parallel issue may be hidden there.
The availability results in a local stock ("In other libraries"), but the volume you are looking for is not included. Select the issue that includes the volume and holds the promise to be available in several libraries in the interlibrary loan region 'NRW /RLP'. Theoretically, the issue with stock in zero libraries would also be an option. We can, indeed, also provide you with journal articles from Bavaria or other interlibrary loan regions.
In the case of zero library availability (in NRW), the GBV will be shown as the supplier, for example. If no library can be found as a supplier at all, it may well be that there are no printed stocks available for interlibrary loan. In many cases, however, we can get you a printout from the e-journal.
Collecting orders from the library can mean either a printout by code at the printing station or a copy deposited at the service desk. For the latter case, select the preferred branch library. Delivery by in-house mail is also possible in the case of article orders. We will print out the essay for you. You can see how many pages your essay comprises. If it is 20 pages or less, you can confidently lower the charge to zero. The flat token fee for each interlibrary loan order will be covered by the library for you.
On the "Order Confirmation" screen, you will be shown a transaction number (TAN) which you can use later to print the document at the printing station - if the expected processing is indicated as "online" under " Information on the Order". You will, however, also receive the TAN later in your pick-up notification.
Ordering Articles - Starting Point "Bibliographical Data"
The basis for ordering the article is the journal in which it can be found. If the journal title consists of very general, or frequently occurring words, the search field "Start of Journal Title" is best suited. However, you must enter the complete title to find your journal. Instead of common journal abbreviations such as "EUR J NEUROL", you must enter the long form ("European Journal of Neuroscience") - even if you use the search field "Words from the Journal Title".
Now the task is to pick out the right one from a list of similar data records. In doing so, you look at the title and also at the publication period. If the article you are looking for is from 2004, you should not select a record that covers the journal up to 1998 or from 2013 onwards. Clicking on the title will take you to the full record of the title with further details.
Before you click on the button "To ILL order form", it may be worth looking at the information on the electronic parallel edition. In this case, there are free full texts, but only for certain very old volumes. You can also use the "Proof of Ownership" button to make sure that there are libraries that own the required volume, i.e. that they would theoretically be able to supply it.
Picking up an item in the library can either mean a printout by code at the printing station or a copy deposited at the service desk. If the latter applies, select the preferred branch library. Delivery by in-house mail is also possible in the case of article orders. We will print out the essay for you. You can see how many pages your essay comprises. If it is 20 or less, you can safely reduce the cost takeover to zero. The library will cover the flat token fee per interlibrary loan order for you.
On the "Order Confirmation" screen, you will be shown a transaction number (TAN) which you can use later to print the document at the printing station - provided that the expected processing is indicated as "online" below "Information about the Order". You will, however, also receive the TAN later in your pick-up notification.
Ordering Books - Starting Point "Thematic Search"
You have found what you were looking for. The full record of the individual hits provides you with important information: It is printed material in book form, i.e. a resource that, as a general rule, can be ordered. Click on the orange button "How do I get it" to start the so-called availability search.
The availability search only checks libraries in our interlibrary loan region (NRW and Rhineland-Palatinate) for stocks with the ISBN of the selected title. So if it says "In stock at a library", it may be that other interlibrary loan regions, e.g. Bavaria or Hesse, also have stock that can be delivered to us in Aachen.
When you click on "To the order form", you have to decide whether you want to borrow the entire book or whether a copy of a section is sufficient (according to § 60e (5), up to 10% of the work is allowed). If you need more than 20 pages, we advise you to borrow the book. However, if the "book" is a loose-leaf edition or a comprehensive reference work, no library will agree to dispatch it. In that case, the order form for book sections / chapters is the correct one.
The options available in Subject Assignment correspond to the faculties of FH Aachen. The query is purely for statistical reasons.
Our question about your willingness to accept another edition refers primarily to older or newer editions of the selected title. We always first try to get you exactly the edition you want. But if, for example, the 2nd edition of 2021 is out on loan in all libraries, but the 1st edition of 2016 is shown as available, we will order this before reserving a copy of the 2nd edition. If, for example, due to a legislative change it is indispensable that you cite the latest edition in your paper, you should tick "No". Another example relates to translations: If the German-language edition is out on loan, we will also use English-language copies if you agree.
If you tick "No" under "Reserve if applicable", we will cancel your order if all the libraries' stocks are out on loan. If the title is very recent, you may still have enough time to submit an acquisition request after receiving the cancellation.
Ordering Books - Starting Point "Bibliographical Data"
The options available in Subject Assignment correspond to the faculties of FH Aachen. The query has purely statistical reasons. Instead of " Education Science", we select "Design", for example.
Our question about your acceptance of another edition refers primarily to older or newer editions of the selected title. We always first try to get you exactly the edition you want. But if, for example, the 34th edition of 2017 is out on loan in all libraries, but the 32nd edition of 2012 is shown as available, we will order that one before reserving a copy of the 34th edition. If, for example, due to a legislative change it is indispensable that you cite the latest edition in your paper, you should tick "No". Another example relates to translations: If the German-language edition is out on loan, we will also use English-language copies if you agree.
If you tick "No" to the option "Reserve if applicable", we will cancel your order if all the libraries' stocks are on loan. If the title is very recent, you may still have enough time to submit an acquisition request after receiving the cancellation.
E-Journals
If, in the course of an availability check (How-do-I-get-it button), you have the choice between a printed and an electronic version of the same journal, choose the printed version, as the order for the electronic version is automatically blocked.
If a journal, or the requested volume, has only been published, or is only available, in electronic form, we will try to obtain a hard copy for you via, for example, commercial delivery services (TIBOrder, SUBITO-doc).
To inform us of your order request, you can evade the blockade with a trick: In the Interlibrary Loan: Journal Articles section, search for a letter combination that is highly unlikely to produce any hits.
Delivery Times
Article Order
The delivery time of articles ordered depends on the form of publication as well as on publisher specifications and ranges from two working days (standard case) to two weeks. You can read more detailed explanations in the section "Forms of Delivery".
If you have received neither a further enquiry, nor a cancellation, nor a pick-up notification from the library 14 days after submitting the order, you should contact the library.
Delivery Forms
Delivery for Lending
Usually you will receive a notification from the library system asking you to pick up the ordered book from the library of your choice. Here, unlike with media from the university library's collection, you have the option of picking up the book right up to the working day before the specified end of the loan period. Interlibrary loans are always kept at the service desk and can only be collected during service hours. You will need your FH Karte to borrow the book.
If you want to authorise your assistant to collect media for you, please leave an account authorisation for them with us.
Delivery via Printing Station
For most article orders, you will receive a pick-up code by e-mail within two working days, which you can use to print out the ordered pages one time at the printing station. The code is valid for 30 days. The document is mostly a black-and-white scan of the print edition, and less often a multi-coloured e-journal download.
Delivery for Reading Room Loans
Occasionally, the owning library provides us with the book you ordered on the condition that it is to be used on the library's premises. Most of the time, these are stocks of so-called non-lending libraries or media that are already out of print or damaged. In order to give you enough time to read or scan important sections, we add the note "To be used in the reading room only" to the pick-up notification.
Although you are not allowed to take the media item in question home, it does have a loan period. Within this loan period, you can pick it up and return it as often as you like at the circulation desk for use within the library premises. When returning the book, please let the staff at the desk know if it can be returned or if you would like to use it again on another day.
Delivery for Retention
On rare occasions, you may receive a message asking you to pick up a delivery of copies at the service desk. Journal articles that libraries are only allowed to share in printed form will, ideally, be delivered to us by fax within a short period of time. In less favourable cases, however, copies and printouts are sent to us by postal mail, which means longer waiting times.
Loan Periods & Renewal
Titles obtained via interlibrary loan cannot be permanently borrowed to your reserve collection.
The loan period of an interlibrary loan item depends solely on the specifications of the owning library. As a rule, this is four weeks after the pick-up notification has been sent. In the "Options" line of the pick-up notification, you can see how much time you are guaranteed to have available and, also, whether there is a possibility of renewal. The information given under reserve is not tenable, for example, if a reservation is made in the owning library. It is not possible to renew interlibrary loans on your own. If necessary, please call us two days before the loan period expires.
International Interlibrary Loan
The FH Aachen library does not participate in international interlibrary loan services. If you urgently need media from libraries abroad, you can contact the interlibrary loan department of the RWTH library. (fernleiheub.rwth-aachen.de, +49 241 80 94457)
Legal Basis LVO NRW
The legal basis for the interlibrary loan are the Interlibrary Loan Regulations (Leihverkehrsordnung), currently valid in the 2004 version.
Prohibitions of Copying and Scanning
Some owning libraries impose an explicit ban on copying or scanning interlibrary loan media. The reason is mainly that book bindings and spines are negatively affected by pressure and that photomechanical reproduction processes are not good for old paper. We ask that you please comply with the specifications of the owning libraries. They bear the responsibility for the preservation of the borrowed item.
