Interlibrary Loans via DocRetriever

  1. Interlibrary Loans are available to all Faculty, Staff and Students of the U.S.C. School of Dentistry.
  2. If the Dental Library does not hold a book or journal that our patron needs, the Library will try to obtain the book or journal article through a procedure known as Interlibrary Loan. (This applies only to books and journals NOT located elsewhere on the University Park Campus; we will obtain materials from the Norris Medical Library located on the Health Sciences Campus if theirs is the only USC library holding the material.)
  3. The Dental School generously absorbs a standard charge per request to obtain an Interlibrary Loan.
  4. If the fee is more than the standard Interlibrary Loan charge, then the patron or their department must pay the difference. Some reasons for excess charges may be:
    1. FAX: articles that are faxed almost always incur a surcharge. This is determined by the lending library.
    2. RUSH: rush charges are usually combined with FAX charges
    3. EXCEED COPY LIMITS: some libraries have a set number of pages they will copy per article; they may refuse to copy an article if it exceeds that limit or they may charge extra for each page copied over the normal limit.
    4. Some libraries may charge more than $11.00 for normal Interlibrary Loans.
  5. Most requests filled by the Norris Medical Library are processed and received within 3 to 5 working days.
  6. Requests filled by other libraries other than the Norris Medical Library can take from 3 working days upto four weeks.
  7. How the Dental Library requests Interlibrary Loans:
    1. DOCLINE: Most Interlibrary Loans are requested electronically through the National Library of Medicine's DOCLINE service. Requests are automatically forwarded to libraries which report owning the title being sought.
    2. ALA: ALA forms sent through the U.S. mail, usually take longer to process than DOCLINE.
    3. OCLC (electronic online system): useful for locating books including non-health related.
  8. How to initiate an Interlibrary Loan request:
  9. Questions: For further information please contact, the Interlibrary Loan supervisor:

    • Phone: (213) 740-8578
    • FAX: (213) 748-8565
    • e-mail: wdl@usc.edu