Interlibrary loan (ILL) is a service provided to BC Law students and faculty that allows access to materials not owned by BC Libraries. ILL requests can be made directly via your BC Libraries account (Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery on bc.edu/libraries) or the Request Interlibrary Loan link from a record in WorldCat. Note: the articles cannot be delivered to your carrel.
Note: If the item you are looking for is available online, please try to access this version before seeking an ILL
It is important that you provide complete citations for each article you are requesting, namely the author, newspaper title, article title, and complete publication date. If you need a specific edition, such as the evening edition, please include that information. It is very difficult to fill newspaper article requests without a page number, and requests lacking page numbers are subject to cancellation. Incomplete or inaccurate information can delay the processing of your request. Consult with a reference librarian before submitting your request if you have any trouble determining the correct citation.
Log into your Interlibrary Loan account, accessed through your BC libraries account, and fill out a request form for the article. If you need a specific edition, be sure to note that in the entry. The more information you provide, the more quickly the request can be processed.
Loans from BC libraries usually take two days, but it can depend on staff and availabilty at the libraries. Loans from other libraries usually take at least a week or two. Most requests are placed via the OCLC interlibrary loan system which requires that we identify up to five potential lenders and allow each one up to four days to accept or reject our request, so please plan accordingly. You can check the status of a request by logging into your Interlibrary Loan account, or you can check with the Information Desk staff for a status update.
If the O'Neill Library holds the cited newspaper in microform, you can submit an Interlibrary loan request for the article. Log into your Interlibrary Loan account through your BC Libraries account and complete an article request form. Please add in the note field that you require an image of the original newspaper. This step is necessary so that staff won't reproduce the article from a database lacking pagination.
While performing a cite check, you encounter a reference to an online version of a newspaper. Your editor insists that you must provide a page reference to the print publication of the article. What steps can you take to discover the print version of the article?
You can search for the article in one of Boston College's databases of newspaper collections. If the article cited as an online source was published in the print editon of the newspaper, you can determine the starting page reference in many electronic databases of newspapers. The Finding Electronic and PDF Versions of Newspaper Articles page of this guide will help you.
Here are two sources to use as starting points in tracking newspaper article pagination. Check the list of major newspapers in the Finding Electronic and PDF Versions of Newspapers page in this Guide as well.