If you’re afraid of books, you definitely don’t want to know about ILL. In fact, if books and all the diverse ideas they contain make you concerned about our society, you can stop here. This article isn’t for you. But if you are the kind of reader with a voracious appetite, craving more and more books from a variety of genres, let me tell you about how libraries have linked together to make their collective impact more powerful, even larger, and all for you.
ILL stands for interlibrary loan, which simply means libraries lend materials to one another. Through ILL, anyone with a Josephine Community Library card can access materials from more than 480 libraries’ collections, including books, DVDs, magazines, audiobooks, maps, musical scores, and recordings. In practical terms, interlibrary loan expands what you can borrow by an estimated 10 to 25 times the size of our local collection.
Last year, our patrons borrowed 856 items through interlibrary loan. Through the same network, other libraries borrowed 65 items from Josephine Community Library.
Behind the scenes, ILL is managed through WorldCat, a worldwide library catalog used by thousands of libraries across the globe, representing 500 languages and billions of items. (You can explore it yourself at WorldCat.org.)
To place a request, open our catalog online at josephine.polarislibrary.com/search, choose “Select Databases,” check WorldCat, and click “Set Databases.” Then search as usual and click “Place Request” when you find the right title. From there, our interlibrary loan program is powered by our local volunteers who donate about seven hours each week. One volunteer submits the request through WorldCat. Another checks in the item when it arrives and places it on hold for pickup.
After it’s returned, a third volunteer packages it up and sends it back to the lending library, completing the loop.
Looking at what our patrons request most often, fiction makes up the largest share, at about 63 percent of ILL requests. Nonfiction and children’s books follow at about 12 percent each. DVDs come in at 7.5 percent of requests. Among fiction requests, the most requested genres are speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy and dystopia), followed by mysteries and romance.
I asked staff and volunteers for a few highlights from the program, examples that show the range of what ILL makes possible.
- Our library can’t carry every book in a series, so it was a real win when a patron was able to borrow 80 Berenstain Bears titles from the beloved children’s series. Seeing their enthusiasm, we added several titles to our shelves to make them available to all our readers.
- Another patron requested the DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, text revision) so they could compare it with our in-collection DSM-5 and see what had changed. Access to both editions allowed the patron to explore updates across time — something they couldn’t do with only one copy.
- A patron used interlibrary loan to borrow several Korean drama (K-Drama) movies, including “Train to Busan,” “Exhuma,” and “Peninsula.” Even though our library doesn’t have these titles, the program made it possible for them to watch and enjoy these films at home.
We also lend to other libraries through the same system. For Josephine Community Library, one of our most frequently requested areas is large print, especially mysteries. Our library has an extensive large print collection. One especially meaningful ILL request came from a library supporting a patron who receives outreach visits. They requested all their items in large-print, and we extended the due dates by at least two months to make sure the patron could enjoy the materials comfortably and at their own pace.
One detail people often ask about is cost. At Josephine Community Library, we only use libraries that do not charge a fee for us to borrow an item. Top libraries we borrow items from include Clackamas County Library, Deschutes Public Library, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle Public Libraries. While patrons do not pay for ILL, shipping isn’t free. Postage currently costs the library about $300 a month to return items to lending libraries, a fraction of the cost of purchasing every requested title, and one of the many benefits of having a library card.
If a request can’t be filled, the patron will see it marked as canceled in their account. We don’t always receive detailed explanations, but common reasons include the item being too new, unavailable, restricted from lending, or too damaged to send through the mail. Checkout is limited to six items at a time.
Interlibrary loan is one of the library’s quiet superpowers — linking libraries together to extend your reach far beyond our shelves, an estimated 10 to 25 times the size of what we can hold locally. If you’d like help placing an ILL request or navigating the online catalog, call 541-476-0571 during open hours. Our volunteers are available to answer the phone and help you get started.
Between the Pages is a monthly column written by Kate Lasky, library director for Josephine Community Library since 2009. To send comments or questions, email klasky@josephinelibrary.org.
BY KATE LASKY
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GRANTS PASS DAILY COURIER | January 2026