The Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) of South
Africa recognizes that individual academic libraries in South Africa cannot
afford to hold all the resources that will be needed by their institution’s researchers.
At the same time, it is the vision of
all academic libraries to provide ready access to information resources for
their users.
Therefore it becomes the
mission of the Inter-Library Loan (ILL) service to provide ready access to the
materials that the Rhodes Library does not hold for its researchers, academic
staff and postgraduate students by co-operating to share library resources
efficiently and effectively with other libraries.
RHODES UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
As the Library has made an enormous financial investment in
both its print resources and the access that it provides to online scholarly
journals and e-books, it is important that these items are not requested on
ILL.
Therefore, before submitting an ILL
request, users should first check
3)
A-Z e-titles via
SFX (a listing of full text electronic journals available to Rhodes users)
to ensure that the item is not held locally.
Once it has been established that the item is not available
at Rhodes, it can be requested on ILL by filling in the appropriate form
1)
electronically
(via the
ILL link
on the OPAC web page)
OR
2)
manually by using the forms available at the Loans
desk on Level 1.
Points to Note:
i)
Before users can request ILL material
electronically, they must first register with the library on OPAC and create a
log-in pin.
ii)
The ILL process is governed by the CHELSA
(Committee for Higher Education Libraries in South Africa) agreement, an agreed
set of criteria and standards to regulate inter-lending between
institutions. This being said, the
lending conditions are determined by the lending library. In the case of books, the return date of the
item must be adhered to as the system depends entirely on the co-operation of
others. Renewal is possible in some
cases and this should be discussed with the ILL staff member.
iii)
At Rhodes University Library the postage costs
of ILL material are charged to the requester.
At present the cost is R 20.00 per item for loaned items (books, theses
etc.) and 50c per page (with R1.00 service charge) for items that need to be
printed. PDFs of items are forwarded to
the requester free of charge.
iv)
Original
periodicals are almost never available for loan. Instead a photocopy of the article is
supplied. As mentioned earlier, with
regard to locally obtained articles, requesters are expected to pay for the
photocopy of the article supplied with the addition of a small service
charge. Articles which are not available
in South Africa can be requested from overseas, although this is an expensive
option. Overseas requests should be discussed with the
ILL staff member.
v)
Non-South African theses which are not held in
South Africa may be purchased by the requester. The ILL staff member should be contacted for
more information about how these theses may be obtained.
vi)
It should be noted that some books are not
available for loan such as reference materials or rare items.
vii)
Provided that the requested item is on the shelf
at the holding library, the average turnaround time for books and articles sent
by mail is 10 – 14 days. Articles sent
by Ariel or PDF should arrive within 3 to 5 days. The average turnaround time for overseas
requests is 14 – 30 days.
Whenever you are
unable to locate an article or book at Rhodes University
– remember to try
Inter-Library Loans!!
