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Kimberly Powell

Interlibrary Loan for Genealogists

By , About.com GuideOctober 28, 2008

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Most public and academic libraries in the United States offer a great service, often overlooked by genealogists, called Interlibrary Loan (ILL). This service allows a local library to borrow a book, microfilm, or other materials that are not available locally from another participating library. Unfortunately, family histories and other specialized genealogy books are not always available through ILL because the libraries that have such books in their collections want to be sure they are available to patrons who may have traveled long distances to use them. There are, however, some libraries that will lend such family history books. In some cases such books may also be available on microfilm, and many libraries will make copies of a few select pages of local history and genealogical publications in response to ILL requests. My favorite use of interlibrary loan is to request microfilm reels of old newspapers (something often not available through the Family History Library), as well as copies of obituaries.

While the majority of U.S. libraries participate in ILL, the following sources are of special interest to genealogists:

  • The Mid-Continent Public Library in Missouri maintains Genealogy in the Heartland, an outstanding collection of over 10,000 genealogy and local history books, all of which are available free of charge to researchers nationwide through interlibrary loan.

  • The library of the National Genealogical Society, consisting of more than 20,000 genealogy and family history books, is deposited at the St. Louis County Public Library in St. Louis, Missouri. Almost every book in this special collection is available through ILL to both NGS members and non-members. The online catalog identifies books in the NGS collection as "SLCL — NGS Collection."

  • The U.S. Library of Congress does not permit its books on genealogy and local history to be borrowed via interlibrary loan. The Library has, however, microfilmed most of its books relating to United States genealogy published from 1876-1900, and this microfilmed material is available for loan. The Library of Congress also accepts requests from libraries outside the US.

Most public libraries in the United States offer ILL services for free - the cost is absorbed as part of the library's operating budget. State, academic and historical society libraries, however, may charge patrons a fee to obtain items through ILL. To learn how interlibrary loan works at your local library, just stop in and ask!

An alternative to Interlibrary Loan for both family history books, as well as microfilmed records, is the Family History Library. For just a few dollars per roll, you can request just about anything in the Family History Library Catalog and have it sent to your local Family History Center for viewing. Another great alternative for articles from local history and genealogical publications is the Allen County Public Library which allows you to directly request copies of articles from periodicals found in PERSI, a comprehensive subject index covering genealogy and local history journals and magazines written in English and French (Canada) since 1800.

Comments
October 28, 2008 at 1:11 pm
(1) James says:

Just wanted to post also share another excellent resource for patrons whose libraries subscribe to HeritageQuest Online from ProQuest. HeritageQuest contains over 23,000 local and genealogy history books they have digitized and over 7,000 books from the American Antiquarian Society.I always find interesting information about people, places, and other historical facts that are key to my family history research!

This article mentioned PERSI from the Allen County Public Library and what is really cool is that HeritageQuest as over 2.1 million seachable citations from the PERSI peridical index. You can even fill out a form and mail it in with the citation information you found!

For those of you interested in government documents and genealogy HeritageQuest also contains genealogy-relevant documents from the US Serial Set. This is fully searchable too and there is like over 470,000 images to research!

Well just thought I would send along this information!

Good luck!

October 28, 2008 at 3:45 pm
(2) Melissa says:

Kimberly

Thanks for the timely reminder. I use ILL frequently, but had not spoken about it on our gen society blog. I posted a reminder today to our blog (Birmingham Genealogical Society blog) with a link to your full article.

Melissa
http://birminghamgenealogy.wordpress.com/

October 28, 2008 at 4:39 pm
(3) Mark Roy says:

I once successfully used ILL to obtain a photocopy of an obituary from a microfilm copy of a newspaper from a distant library. There was a small copying charge ($1).

October 28, 2008 at 5:41 pm
(4) GCO says:

World Cat is a great catalog for finding materials which can then be requested via ILL:

worldcat.org

October 28, 2008 at 6:50 pm
(5) Jennifer says:

Hi Kimberley… The link to Australian resources doesn’t appear to be working, brought me to this page..
Thanks
Aussie Jen

October 29, 2008 at 7:40 am
(6) Jennifer Kuehn says:

While many libraries will not lend books from their collection on genealogy, they may be willing to look up a name and copy a few pages.

October 29, 2008 at 10:42 am
(7) Kathy says:

The Family History Library in Salt Lake City is also teaming up with several other libraries to digtize family history books that are out of copyright or for which permission to digitize has been obtained. These digitized family history books are available free at: http://www.lib.byu.edu/fhc/index.html

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