#interlibrary-loan — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #interlibrary-loan, aggregated by home.social.
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Libraries Can’t Get Their Loaned Books Back Because of Trump’s Tariffs – 404Media
Libraries Can’t Get Their Loaned Books Back Because of Trump’s Tariffs
By Emanuel Maiberg, Oct 6, 2025 at 10:05 AM
Libraries have shared their collections internationally for decades. Trump’s tariffs are throwing that system into chaos and can ‘hinder academic progress.’
Photo by Raul Rosas / UnsplashThe Trump administration’s tariff regime and the elimination of fee exemptions for items under $800 is limiting resource sharing between university libraries, trapping some books in foreign countries, and reversing long-held standards in academic cooperation.
“There are libraries that have our books that we’ve lent to them before all of this happened, and now they can’t ship them back to us because their carrier either is flat out refusing to ship anything to the U.S., or they’re citing not being able to handle the tariff situation,” Jessica Bower Relevo, associate director of resource sharing and reserves at Yale University Library, told me.
After Trump’s executive order ended the de minimis exemption, which allowed people to buy things internationally without paying tariffs if the items cost less than $800, we’ve written several stories about how the decision caused chaos over a wide variety of hobbies that rely on people buying things overseas, especially on Ebay, where many of those transactions take place.
Libraries that share their materials internationally are in a similar mess, partly because some countries’ mail services stopped shipments to and from the U.S. entirely, but the situation for them is arguably even more complicated because they’re not selling anything—they’re just lending books.
“It’s not necessarily too expensive. It’s that they don’t have a mechanism in place to deal with the tariffs and how they’re going to be applied,” Relevo said. “And I think that’s true of U.S. shipping carriers as well. There’s a lot of confusion about how to handle this situation.”
“The tariffs have impacted interlibrary loans in various ways for different libraries,” Heather Evans, a librarian at RMIT University in Australia, told me in an email. “It has largely depended on their different procedures as to how much they have been affected. Some who use AusPost [Australia’s postal service] to post internationally have been more impacted and I’ve seen many libraries put a halt on borrowing to or from the US at all.” (AusPost suspended all shipments to the United States but plans to renew them on October 7).
Relevo told me that in some cases books are held up in customs indefinitely, or are “lost in warehouses” where they are held for no clear reason.
As Relevo explains it, libraries often provide people in foreign institutions books in their collections by giving them access to digitized materials, but some books are still only available in physical copies. These are not necessarily super rare or valuable books, but books that are only in print in certain countries. For example, a university library might have a specialized collection on a niche subject because it’s the focus area of a faculty member, a French university will obviously have a deeper collection of French literature, and some textbooks might only be published in some languages.
A librarian’s job is to give their community access to information, and international interlibrary loans extend that mission to other countries by having libraries work together. In the past, if an academic in the U.S. wanted access to a French university’s deep collection of French literature, they’d have to travel there. Today, academics can often ask that library to ship them the books they want. Relevo said this type of lending has always been useful, but became especially popular and important during COVID lockdowns, when many libraries were closed and international travel was limited.
“Interlibrary loans has been something that libraries have been able to do for a really long time, even back in the early 1900s,” Relevo said. “If we can’t do that anymore and we’re limiting what our users can access, because maybe they’re only limited to what we have in our collection, then ultimately could hinder academic progress. Scholars have enjoyed for decades now the ability to basically get whatever they need for their research, to be very comprehensive in their literature reviews or the references that they need, or past research that’s been done on that topic, because most libraries, especially academic libraries, do offer this service […] If we can’t do that anymore, or at least there’s a barrier to doing that internationally, then researchers have to go back to old ways of doing things.”
See Also: Another version of this story online in the blog.
Continue/Read Original Article: https://www.404media.co/libraries-cant-get-their-loaned-books-back-because-of-trumps-tariffs/
#2025 #404Media #America #Books #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #InterlibraryLoan #International #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #LoanedBooks #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Technology #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpSTariffs #UnitedStates #UniversityLibraries
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Tonight's #movie, unriffed, was 1955's The Quatermass Xperiment, one we've been wanting to see for years. This was the #film that put #Hammer on the map. And it holds up pretty well. A little slow in spots, but pretty good in general. Good atmosphere, good suspense, good cinematography, and surprisingly good subtle humor. Thank you, #InterlibraryLoan! #Libraries are the best!
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📚 Libraries as “Academic Traffic Facilities”: Interlibrary Loan Imaginations after 1945
After #WWII, German #libraries faced massive losses. This article explores how interlibrary loan became central to rebuilding the academic landscape — not just through logistics, but through a new vision of knowledge.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/735653
#LibraryHistory #InterlibraryLoan #ILL #ResourceSharing #KnowledgeInfrastructure #AcademicLibraries #PostwarHistory #UnionCatalogs #Germany #Collections #Holdings
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Internet Archive Blogs: Access the Internet Archive collections with RapidILL. “Here’s a resource sharing tip for our community of librarians: RapidILL members have an option to include the Internet Archive as a potential supplier for their borrowing requests.”
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https://hongkongfp.com/2025/02/05/us-postal-service-suspends-inbound-parcels-from-hong-kong-and-china-amid-tariff-war/
I wonder if that affects #interlibraryloan . Can we return or borrow #books with partner libraries in the US?
#libraries -
Gunasekaran, P. (2025). Systems Librarian Perspective on Interlibrary Loan System Migration from #ILLiad to #Tipasa. Journal of #Library Resource Sharing, 1–14.
https://doi.org/10.1080/26915979.2025.2454551 -
“I’ll Wait Zero Seconds”: Faculty Perspectives on Serials Access, Sharing, and Immediacy
https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/26622/34533
#libraries #academiclibraries #research #databases #subscriptions #journals #collections #interlibraryloan #ILL #resourcesharing #documentdelivery
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Automating borrowing #eBooks through interlibrary loan
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15228959.2024.2442712
#InterlibraryLoan #ResourceSharing #Automation #ILL #libraries #AcademicLibraries #ILLiad #WorldShare
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Is there anyone on here who happens to have institutional library access and can get things like PDFs of journal articles? I'm looking for something specific.
(inb4: I know that libgen, z-library, archive.org etc. exist. They're great and I love them, but they don't have everything.)
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Analyzing Chat Transcripts to Improve Interlibrary Loan Services
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26915979.2024.2417275
#InterlibraryLoan #ILL #QualitativeAnalysis #Reference #VirtualChatTranscripts #ResourceSharing #LibChat #ILLiad #AcademicLibraries #Libraries
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#AI: NEW Video From #IFLA: Can Artificial Intelligence Lead Us to a Smarter #ILL Future or Other Library Services? *https://www.infodocket.com/2024/08/21/this-alabama-library-had-to-review-8000-books-heres-what-happened-golden-gate-university-selects-folio-cengage-launches-genai-powered-student-assistant-in-beta-more-headlines/ #libraries #OCLC #interlibraryloan
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@turtlebeans I still rent videos -- especially rare ones, or ones I'm thinking about purchasing. #Maine's #InterlibraryLoan system was offline, but seems to be back again. #ILL is an amazing resource -- especially for rural areas!
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The National Library of Australia has chosen #Rapido to support its #ResourceSharing services. It will be integrated with the Library's #FOLIO instance.
#InterlibraryLoan #ILL #libraries #integration #interoperability
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@mem_somerville Nice to hear! That's on my to-read list. (In fact, I might end up with that actual book sitting in front of you 😆 ) #interlibraryLoan
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Not in collection of https://www.saclibrary.org/ or https://library.ucdavis.edu/ but available via #InterLibraryLoan at both.
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In today's #TinyVictories: I learned how to renew and successfully renewed an #InterLibraryLoan.
It's a good thing, because #CorneliusCastoriadis's writing is _dense_.
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Koger, Victoria (2023). "Mediated Demand Driven Acquisitions for Most Formats through #InterlibraryLoan Requests" The Southeastern Librarian, 71(2) https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/seln/vol71/iss2/5/
Interesting paper sharing a similar experience with some chapters from "Beyond the Library #Collections" https://e-publish.uliege.be/beyond-the-library-collections/
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💡 Prevent multiple requests from a same borrowing library within a short period of time
#ResourceSharing #Interlibraryloan #ILL #RapidILL #Rapido #Alma #UserServices #libraries #Digitization
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1️⃣ #ILL request for a book chapter created at 17:25
2️⃣ Automatic workflow: Alma ➡️ #RapidILL ➡️ Provider ➡️ Alma
3️⃣ #Alma Document Delivery letter with download link received at 17:31. Full text provided by @internetarchive #InterlibraryLoan Fulfillment 💪👍🙏
#ResourceSharing -
[📢 Service Call] First copies of #OpenAccess book "Beyond the Library #Collections" have now arrived! ⤵️⤵️
Free download & Buy: https://e-publish.uliege.be/beyond-the-library-collections/front-matter/download/
#Collaboration #Libraries #InterlibraryLoan #ILL #ResourceSharing #POD #PDA #EBA #Alma #Koha #RapidILL #LibrarySystems #Digitalization #Workflows #i6doc #ebooks #ULiège
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📢 Our #ebook "Beyond the Library Collections: Proceedings of the 2022 Erasmus Staff Training Week at #ULiège Library" is not only available in #OpenAccess 🔓 at https://doi.org/10.25518/978-2-87019-313-6 (html, pdf and epub), but can now also be ordered in print 📘 from i6doc at https://i6doc.com/fr/book/?GCOI=28001100571780
#LibraryCooperation #InterlibraryLoan #ILL #ResourceSharing #Digitization #AcademicLibraries #RapidILL #Alma #Koha #Impala #Subito #CollectionDevelopment #PDA #EBA #ResearchLibraries #Libraries #Automation #OA
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Document #Delivery Services and #ResourceSharing Preferences in Nigerian #Libraries