If you are local to the San Luis Valley, the Nielsen Library can request books from other libraries for you. The first place to look if you don't find what you're looking for in our catalog (see "Finding Books" page in this guide), is right at the bottom of the page of your catalog search. There, you'll see search results from an organization called Prospector, which is a consortium of libraries in Colorado and Wyoming who share resources.
Either click on the title of what you're looking for if you see it, or click "See all results in Prospector". To make a request, you'll just need your name and the full number underneath the library barcode on your ID.
If you don't live in Alamosa or the San Luis Valley, see if one of your local libraries is a Prospector library (check this list). If it is, it will probably be faster for you to investigate how to make Prospector requests through a local library branch.
Interlibrary Loan is a process by which the Nielsen Library borrows an article we don't have access to through a subscription from another library on your behalf.
The most common way students make an interlibrary loan request is when they come across an article in a database search (see "Finding Articles" page in this guide) that isn't available in full text. Notice how this search result does not have a "PDF Full Text" or "HTML Full Text" link:
To find that article even though the library doesn't have a subscription, follow these two steps in this order:
1. Click the "Search Google Scholar" link. A large number of scholarly articles are actually available for free online. It's worth a shot to check Google Scholar. If the full text is available for free, there will be a link on the right-hand side of the page:
If the article you're looking for is not available through Google Scholar for free, proceed to step 2.
Sometimes, the full text links in Scholar will still take you to a place where you are asked to pay for access to the article. Fear not. If you reach a point where you are asked to pay, go ahead and proceed to step 2:
2. Click the Click Here for ILL request link. That will take you to the Nielsen Library's Interlibrary Loan request form. The bibliographical information about the article will automatically go into the form, so all you'll have to do is enter your contact information (you only need to do that the first time!), agree that you won't be using the article to break copyright law, and submit the request.
Since ILL requests are almost always sent digitally, it often only takes one or two days to get an article, though our official turnaround time expectation is one week.
