An overview

Western Michigan University has an excellent interlibrary loan service.  If you identify books and articles we do not own, they will do their utmost to borrow them for you.  This service,with very, very few exceptions, is free of charge to WMU students, faculty, and staff.

How long does a request take?

Journal articles are generally digitized and sent to your email box within one or two days of being requested. Books take a bit longer, since they must be physically mail to Waldo Library (or you, the user). Normally, books arrive in one to two weeks.

How to request an item

Before using WMU's interlibrary loan service, you must first register and set up an account.  Click here to begin the process.  You will be asked to login with your BroncoNetID and password.  If you have never used the service before, follow the prompts for First Time Users.   You only have to register once during your time at WMU.

Request an item within an article database

Many of our journal databases allow you to put in an interlibrary loan request directly from the database itself.  Be on the lookout for this button in whatever database you are searching .  You will click on it to see if WMU owns the journal you are looking for.  If we do not, you will see a link underneath it that says "Get it elsewhere."  Just login in with your BroncoNetID and password and let the system do the rest.

MeLCat - Another way to reqest items

Some researchers like to use MelCat (the Michigan eLibrary catalog and resource sharing system) to see if any local libraries have the item they are looking for.  Feel free to try this, too. Sometimes MelCat books arrive sooner.  You may borrow books and DVDs through MelCat.

WMU Libraries' Borrow and Request webpage

See WMU Libraries' Borrow and Request webpage. for more info on using interlibrary loan or MeLCat to borrow items from other libraries.