Interlibrary loan service
Objective
The objective of the interlibrary loan (ILL) service is to locate and request documents (originals or copies) from other institutions that are not part of the UDC library collection, and also to provide documents from our collection to other libraries or external centres.
Users
All members of the UDC university community can use the service: students, teaching and research staff, technical, management and administrative staff and authorised external library users.
Documents that can be requested
Books, chapters or parts of books, journal articles, conference proceedings, theses, audiovisual material, etc. can be requested. Not all libraries lend all types of documents.
The following items cannot be requested: patents, regulations, full issues of magazines or reference works (dictionaries, encyclopaedias, etc.).
The requested documents can only be used for private, teaching or research purposes, and their reproduction and use is subject to current copyright and intellectual property legislation.
Fees
Interlibrary loans are subject to the charges set by the supplying libraries.
For members of the university community, the costs of interlibrary loans are covered by the University Library Service provided that the reproduction does not exceed the amount of €60.
Authorised external users have to bear the costs of the documents they request through this service.
Regulations
The basic regulations of the service can be consulted.
How to use this service
Before requesting any document, the user should always consult the library catalogue (CRUNIA) to make sure that it is not available at the UDC.
If the document is located in any of the university libraries, use the reservation and inter-centre loan option.
If this is the first time you are using this service, you must first request to register using the registration form.
If you are a member of the university community, you can associate your PI validation keys with your UDC service credentials. Consult the guide to using the service.
Once inside the system, you must fill in a form for each document. If you have the DOI or PubMed ID, the application will automatically fill in the document details. To speed up the process, it is recommended that you provide as much bibliographic information as possible. You can consult the user guide.
Most requests are processed within a maximum period of 24 hours and from that moment on the time of receipt depends on the supplying centre.
In the ‘My requests’ section of your personal interlibrary loan account you will receive a detailed communication about the processing of your requests: where they are requested, when they are received, any complaints made, the reference source (if the data is not sufficient to identify the document), etc.
Most articles and parts of books are provided in electronic format. You will receive an email message notifying you of the URL where you can download it.
The rest of the documents arrive by post, which is why it will take longer to receive them. Once received, they will be sent to your centre's library so that you can borrow them for the period of time indicated. If the book comes from a library that does not lend books to the end user, you would have to come and consult it at the Central Library (Elviña Campus, A Coruña) or at the Casa do Patín Library (Ferrol Campus).
Users must treat the documents with special care and respect the return deadlines and loan conditions, which are established by the supplying centre. Interlibrary loan books have a yellow band on which the return date is indicated. An extension of the loan period can be requested if necessary, but the decision will always depend on the supplying centre.
Delays in returning books or failure to collect them by the user may result in sanctions.