One way or another, the library can almost always provide you with the books, articles, and videos that you need while you’re at Stephens. If we have what you need in our collection, that’s great, but if not you can request items through “interlibrary loan.” To make an interlibrary loan request use the following link and complete the required fields:

• Interlibrary Loan

Note that before making requests the library relies on students, faculty, and staff to first check if materials are available through normal channels. For books this means first checking the Stephens Library Catalog and the MOBIUS Catalog before making a request. You can request MOBIUS books on your own through the website. MOBIUS books generally take three working days to arrive.

For articles we recommend first using the search box on the library’s homepage. This is our Ebsco Discovery Service which is a gigantic database that will usually provide citations (and often the full-text) of what you are needing. If full-text is not immediately available simply click on the “Request It” link for any particular article and it will route you to our interlibrary loan service and actually fill in the citation info for you.

How long will it take?

After making a request…

• Articles usually take 1 to 3 days to arrive. When available we will send you an email with a link and password.

• Books take about a week. However, MOBIUS requests usually take 3 or 4 working days and Prospector requests 6 working days.

What about textbooks?

It’s the library’s policy to not purchase course textbooks. The are many reasons: (1) textbooks change editions frequently and thus become outdated very quickly; (2) only one student can use them at a time; (3) they can be very expensive and eat up funds that can be used in other ways.

However, you can certainly check to see if the Stephens, MOBIUS, or Prospector catalogs have available a textbook that you need.