In addition to Resource Sharing from other SUNY Libraries, you can order books from other non-SUNY libraries by using Interlibrary Loan (ILL). ILL orders are placed by using WorldCat, the World Catalog of over 14,000 libraries. You can access both ILL and WorldCat from the front page of the library's website. As with Resource Sharing, ILL orders generally take 7-10 days to arrive, and you'll receive an email informing you when it's ready to be picked up at the Crumb Library's circulation desk.
Since WorldCat includes so many libraries, general search results within it can be overwhelmingly large, with thousands upon thousands of results. Because of this, we advise you to use WorldCat when you've already identified a specific book or are looking for the works by a specific author. Zeroing in on exactly what you need makes WorldCat much easier to use. As always, if you need any help ordering, stop by the library and a librarian will be happy to help out.
To order an Interlibrary Loan book through WorldCat, follow these steps:
1. If you've yet to do so, set up an ILL account by clicking the Interlibrary Loan link on the library's front page. This only requires your name and email address. Once that's taken care of, click WorldCat to start looking for your book.
2. Use WorldCat's search fields to look for your book. If you have a specific title in mind, change the dropdown to Title, or if you want a specific author, change it to Author. WorldCat can be very picky during searches, so if it can't find your book, try using Title Phrase or Author Phrase instead.
3. Locate the book you're looking for from the list of results and click its link to go to its WorldCat entry.
4. Once in the catalog entry, you can see what libraries have copies of the book by clicking the Libraries icon at the top left, and you can order the book by clicking the Request item through ILLiad link in the middle of the page. This will open a pre-filled form that you can submit to complete your order.
5. The list of libraries will look like this. If you see that it's held by Clarkson, St. Lawrence, SUNY Canton, or another convenient library that you can reach, you may want to actually go to that library and check the book out in person, since that will be much quicker than ordering it.
