interlibrary loan
noun1
A loan of an item (such as a book, article, or sound recording) between two library systems or similar institutions.
Library science
- Only one university in the country had the book they needed but they were able to get it sent to their local library via interlibrary loan.
- The Summon discovery service, as implemented at Penn State, prioritizes retrieval of online and locally owned material; therefore, it was not unexpected to observe a reduction in interlibrary loan borrowing requests by undergraduates.2016, Linda R. Musser, Barbara M. Coopey, “Impact of a Discovery System on Interlibrary Loan”, in College & Research Libraries, volume 77, number 5, →DOI, page 651:
- Synonyms
- interloan, ILL