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Suppliers Lists of Commercial
Suppliers
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Not every potential lender or article supplier accepts requests through OCLC. There are several other methods of obtaining materials if you cannot borrow them from OCLC supplying libraries. Commercial suppliers, libraries who do not belong to OCLC, and libraries who are non-suppliers (lower case) on OCLC may all be valuable sources of requested material. Each of these types of suppliers has its own requirements, benefits, and drawbacks. There are many commercial suppliers for article or other photocopy requests. Commercial vendors all charge a fee to supply articles to libraries (or to anyone). Copyright permission fees are almost always included in the cost of the article (an extra expense if the article falls under fair use guidelines). Some commercial suppliers specialize in a particular type of material, such as scientific or medical articles; other suppliers have a broad range of available journals. When selecting a commercial supplier, it is important to consider the cost of the requested material, the depth and breadth of the collection from which you are requesting, and the payment methods the supplier is willing to accept. There are several commercial document suppliers that will accept requests over the OCLC ILL subsystem and accept IFM payments. However, for many commercial suppliers, your library will need to set up an account. Many libraries in the United States do not belong to OCLC because of the high cost of both membership and the technology. This does not mean that these libraries may not lend part of their collection through interlibrary loan. Additionally, some collections are not cataloged on OCLC for a variety of reasons. Tracking down these libraries can be difficult. Many libraries without OCLC probably also do not have online catalogs. However, occasionally, someone will place a request for a particular item, noting that it is available in a certain location. This is particularly common with genealogy requests. This information may be found on a variety of genealogical web sites or other resources. Though many libraries will not lend genealogical material, there are also quite a few who will. Paper interlibrary loan requests in approved ALA format can be mailed, faxed, or emailed to libraries who are not OCLC members. Some libraries who are members of OCLC appear in OCLC holdings lists in lower case. It is not possible to place an online request to these libraries through the OCLC ILL subsystem. However, many of these libraries do accept requests by mail, fax, or email. Some libraries may not lend on OCLC because the volume of requests would far exceed staff resources; other libraries use systems that are not compatible with the OCLC product. Stanford University is one example of a library whose collection is noted on OCLC, but who does not accept online requests via OCLC. They accept mail, fax, or email requests and even have their own online request system with which your library can register so requests can be placed online through their unique system. If the only remaining libraries on the OCLC record are lower case, check their NAD. If it doesn't say that their collection is completely noncirculating, it may be worth sending off a request by some other means. |