By Monica Slayton

Dean of Libraries, Edward A. Warro, announced last week that Northeastern University faculty, students and staff will enjoy free Interlibrary Loan services. This is a pilot program that will run from October 1 through December 31, 2002.

Through Interlibrary Loan, users can obtain books and articles for their research that are not available at Northeastern. Up to this point, the Northeastern community members who took advantage of this service may have incurred some costs as a result of obtaining research materials from other institutions or document vendors.

Under this new program, University Libraries will subsidize these fees. Excluded from this service will be dissertations purchased from University Microfilms International (UMI) and expedited delivery, i.e. overnight delivery.

“The library holds primary responsibility at the university for providing information. It only makes sense to offer the Northeastern Community free Interlibrary Loan to supplement our in-house collections and to provide timely and easy access to information. The Northeastern Community must have free access to information if we are to achieve top 100 status as a research institution,” Dean Warro said.

Through Interlibrary Loan Services, Snell Library is able to obtain research materials locally, nationally, and internationally. This service benefits patrons’ research by providing access to a much broader set of research materials than could possibly be available in any one library. This project demonstrates the library’s commitment to providing a high level of service to meet the research needs of the Northeastern Community.