Tidewater Community College participates in the practice of interlibrary loan in order to allow patrons access to materials not held by their home libraries. We comply with copyright law of the United States (Title 17 United States Code), VIVA interlibrary loan guidelines, and the American Library Association’s Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States.
In this document, libraries that supply a loan for a TCC patron are referred to as lending libraries. Libraries that borrow a TCC item on behalf of one their patrons are referred to as borrowing libraries.
Borrowing
- Interlibrary loan services are available to current TCC students, faculty and staff. A valid TCC ID card is required for this service. Community members can request interlibrary loans through their local public library system.
- Patrons initiate an interlibrary loan by filling out a request form online, for each item needed. Patrons are limited to no more than 10 active interlibrary loan requests at a time.
- TCC will not request interlibrary loans for items that are available in our libraries. This includes books on reserve or in the reference collection. TCC reserves the right to limit repeat requests for the same item. Priority will be given to requests for resources that support academic work.
- TCC cannot guarantee that patrons will receive every item requested through interlibrary loan. The following items are generally difficult or impossible to borrow:
- Textbooks, especially recent editions
- Recently published books or best sellers
- Reference books and oversized books
- Entire issues of periodicals
- Audiovisuals
- Rare materials, manuscripts, or fragile items
- Library staff will put the requests into a resource sharing system to send them to other participating libraries. A lending library will then send the item to TCC. Availability, transit time, and other factors affect how long it takes to receive a requested item.
- Patrons will be notified by email when an interlibrary loan has arrived. They can pick up items at the circulation desk where the items will be checked out to them.
- Articles are usually sent through a secure document delivery system. A link to the article in will be emailed directly to the patron.
- Loan periods, renewals, overdue fees and replacement costs are determined by the lending library and may not correspond to normal TCC policy. Borrowers are responsible for overdue fines and any replacement or repair fees.
- Requests for a renewal must be made before the book is due.
- Patrons should return interlibrary loans to the circulation desk of the campus library where the items were originally checked out. Depositing interlibrary loans in a book drop or returning them to another campus may result in delays returning the item to the lending library.
- Patrons have seven days after receiving the email to pick up the item. If the item is not checked out in seven days, it will be returned to the lending library. A pattern of late returns or requests that are never picked up may result in a patron losing interlibrary loan privileges.
Lending
- Tidewater Community college libraries participate in resource sharing with other libraries. Requests through OCLC are preferred, as this allows for better tracking through each step of the loan process.
- TCC libraries lend books, articles and audiovisuals. Books on reserve will not be lent. Reference books will be lent only to other VIVA or in-state institutions.
- Articles are lent through secure a document delivery service.
- TCC uses expedited shipping for VIVA institutions and first class mail for loans to other institutions.
- Borrowing libraries are responsible for any loss or damage an item suffers in the course of the loan.
- Items should be returned to Cataloging at the Virginia Beach Campus. After they have been checked in, they will be sent on to campus libraries through intercampus mail.
