Interlibrary Loan / Document Delivery Services (ILLiad): Step 3: Get Your Material

After you place a request in ILLiad, library staff get to work trying to find another library that has the journal you need. Once we obtain a pdf on your behalf, we'll send you an email that looks something like this to let you know the article has arrived:

You will then be able to click on the link in the email to get into your ILLiad account and retrieve the documents. Or, you can access your account directly if you are concerned the email might be a phishing scam.

For articles, or other pdfs, click on Electronically Received Articles under the View menu.  You will have 90 days to download the pdf to your computer. After 90 days, the library will delete the pdf from your ILLiad account.

Are you in the Des Moines area?  If you live in the area you will need to come to the library in person to retrieve print books, or make a copy of a print journal article. Library staff will not mail books to you or copy these items for you. Print materials will be held at the Circulation desk for you to pick up in person.

Are you outside of the Des Moines area?  If the library has a print volume that you need, we will mail print materials to your house, if we have a current address for you. We know the addresses listed in the student directory may not be up to date if you are out on rotations. Please keep your account information in ILLiad current if you need us to mail material to your home.  Library staff will also scan to pdf any journal article that is only available in print at the library and not available electronically.

Generally we can get article pdf's within 5 business days. Often we can get journal pdf's sooner, maybe even as fast as a day or two.

Books or other print documents will take longer to receive as we have to wait for another Library to mail out the item.  This makes it hard to predict a time line, but you should expect on average 5-10 business days.