Students, faculty, and staff at Mount St. Mary's University may use our Interlibrary Loan service to request books and articles from other libraries.  A valid Mount Login ID and password are required. 

Interlibrary Loan requests may be submitted using either of two request forms:

1. imbedded within search results records of WorlcCat Discovery, or
2. the blank form that works independent of WorldCat Discovery; it is useful for submitting incomplete citations or unusual requests. 

If you have questions about the ILL process, contact:

Ana Ulrich 
Interlibrary Loan Office
(301) 447-5430 or (301) 447-5254

​Expect the following standard processing times for requests, which are handled Monday-Friday:

• Standard book request - 7 days
• Standard article or book chapter requests - 3 days.

Physical materials will be available as soon as they are received from our lending partners, processed, and made available for pick-up at the library service desk. 

Phillips Library cannot place interlibrary loan requests for materials to be used for course reserve, class, or other group use.

The following kinds of materials are not ordinarily obtainable from other libraries:

• Complete issues of unbound periodicals
• Complete volumes of bound periodicals
• Reference books or rare books
• Materials which are difficult or expensive to pack or ship

Financial Responsibility

The average Interlibrary Loan costs approximately $25.00 for handling, mailing and lending library charges. Phillips Library provides this service free-of-charge to members of the MSMU community.   

If you anticipate borrowing an item multiple times, it may be more appropriate to request the purchase of a book or journal issue rather than borrowing.   Contact a member of the library staff to discuss this option. 

The borrower is responsible for returning items on time and in the same condition as when the loan was received. If you, as a borrower abuse this responsibility, you jeopardize future interlibrary loan transactions.

• If an item is not returned to us, there is a $100 fee for replacement and processing charges.
• If a borrower regularly abuses ILL responsibilities, our staff reserves the right to suspend the borrower's privileges.

Phillips Library now offers a fee-based article delivery service that includes access to journals outside our own subscriptions.   

Using Copyright Clearance Center‘s Get It Now service, we can purchase articles for MSMU faculty and students and get them very quickly.  

PDFs of articles are sent directly to the requestor via email. Average turnaround time for Get It Now articles is less than five minutes.  

This service can be used by submitting a request on the generic  ILL form; or by contacting Kathleen Sterner or Charlie Gallagher.   

Kathleen Sterner
Faculty Librarian
(301) 447-5431

​Charles F. Gallagher
Evening Supervisor - Special Collections
(301) 447-5245