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Scholar Speak

A Library Without Walls:  Harnessing the Power of Interlibrary Loan

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Written By: Janelle Foster

UNT Libraries offer abundant resources and services to further the educational careers of UNT students. But did you know that, as a student of UNT, you can also utilize the collections of hundreds of other libraries? When you can’t access what you need through UNT Libraries, use Interlibrary Loan.

Interlibrary Loan is a service provided free of charge for enrolled students, faculty, and staff. It allows you to check out materials that are not owned or currently available through UNT from other participating libraries. This means that millions of print and electronic items are accessible to you!

A Brief History of Interlibrary Loan

The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) is a non-profit library cooperative that was founded in 1967. Its primary mission is to “make information more accessible and more useful” (OCLC, 2019). One of the instruments of this mission is the resource-sharing initiative WorldCat, an immense, searchable database comprised of library collections from around the world. Another is the OCLC Interlibrary Loan System, which revolutionized interlibrary loan when it was rolled out in 1979 (Nevins, 1998). While the exchange of materials between libraries was practiced before this date, it was done with far more effort and required extensive searching of other libraries (without a computer) and cumbersome paperwork (with a typewriter) (Nevins, 1998). With the introduction of the OCLC Interlibrary Loan System, the process became automated and has evolved currently into an integrated software that connects libraries on a global scale. Request submittal, item verification, locating potential lenders, and item retrieval all now function within a streamlined, electronic system that library patrons themselves can initiate with ease (Nevins, 1998) Read more

Welcome to Scholar Speak

Posted by & filed under Library Resources.

There is a common theme among academic libraries, which is to adapt, develop, and maintain. Whether it is a new policy or technology, libraries aim to mold new tools into services for their patrons. Original items are becoming digitized, libraries are reaching farther than their walls, and cutting-edge technologies compose the growing makerspaces in many libraries. But let’s dial back to a web tool most of us know, which are blogs. Although blogs are not new within UNT Libraries, Scholar Speak is a fresh initiative as a student-to-student scholarly blog.  We hope to use Scholar Speak as a medium to bridge the gap between students, patrons, and their library. This means we will discuss topics and events related to UNT Libraries, as well as inform readers of scholarly tools and insights as they pursue their academic career. To further close this gap, we hope to create a collaborative space, where we hear back from our readers and bring conversation to these topics. Feel free to leave suggestions or comments in the comments form or email us at Askus@unt.edu.
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