UPSEM students, faculty and staff may request books, articles and media through our interlibrary loan (ILL) service.  Physical items may only be loaned from our Richmond location, however, so those who are unable to pick up and return items in Richmond will only be able to request articles or other items that can be delivered electronically.

Physical items (books, photocopies, etc.) acquired via ILL will be held at the Circulation Desk of Morton Library in Richmond. Digital materials will be sent electronically. In either case, patrons will be notified by email regarding the status of their requests.  Physical items should be returned to staff at the Circulation Desk of the Morton Library in Richmond.

$1 per day will be charged to your library account for each overdue ILL item.  Items overdue for 7 days or more will cause your library privileges to be suspended.

Interlibrary loan services are only available for scholarly purposes. Those interested in materials for non-scholarly purposes and individuals not served through our interlibrary loan service should request ILL through a public library.

If you place a request for our materials through a public library, please be aware that we will not loan curriculum resources and that we fill ILL requests in a particular priority order.  We are occasionally unable to fill public library requests depending on the number of requests we are managing from our Virginia (VIVA) consortium partners and other American Theological Library Association schools.

We will not borrow items that the library already owns (even if they are checked out), textbooks or other required readings for current UPSem courses.

We will not borrow items via ILL for patrons who have overdue materials or outstanding fines.

Whole issues or volumes of periodicals cannot be borrowed.

The length and conditions of interlibrary loans are determined by lending libraries and may vary.  Items may also be recalled by lending libraries at their discretion.

Some material (such as microfiche and microfilm) must be viewed in the Morton Library building.  Other libraries can also request that their books not leave Morton Library.  If that is the case, we will let you know.

A patron can borrow only five items at a time through interlibrary loan.

We are only allowed to borrow five articles from one journal within the most recent five years of that journal’s publication – five cumulative articles, not five per patron. When we have reached that five article limit, we may attempt to purchase the article for your use.