Health Library News

 We are currently unable to request any inter-library loan articles or books from the British Library. This is due to issues at the British Library's end and is out of the Health Library's control. The British Library is used by us as a last resort. If we can obtain requested items from our other inter-library loan suppliers instead, we will do so. Whilst the problems are ongoing, any items needing to be requested from the British Library will have to be pended until such time as their document supply service is back up and running. We do not know when this will be.

A new service providing free electronic access to doctoral thesis from UK based Higher Education Institutes, will be launched Tuesday 14th October. As a result of the EThOS (Electronic Thesis On Line System) service, the British Library will no longer be offering a microfilm loan service. Visit http://ethos.bl.uk/ to search the EThOS service and download one of the thousands of theses already digitised. If the document you are searching for is not available, EThOS can be requested to obtain and digitise it. The researcher will not normally be charged for this unless the institution supplying the thesis requires it. Further information is available at http://www.ethos.ac.uk/ .

Due to the increasing demands on the service and budget restraints, a new fee will be introduced for the renewal of interlibrary loans borrowed from the British Library. A couple of years ago the British Library started to charge for renewing loans £3.10 per renewal, which up until now the Library has managed to cover. A subsidised fee will be introduced of £1.00 per item per renewal. The ILL team will add this as a manual fee to the appropriate library record once confirmation of the renewal has been received by the British Library.

Please help us maintain our high standard of service by considering what it is you are requesting. Here are a few helpful tips to save your own money and staff time: If the article is only 1 page, then generally it will be a letter, comment or poster abstract from a conference. The full research might not necessarily have been published. When performing a literature search, if a title is in brackets, then the full text is in a foreign language. All abstracts are published in English, but this doesn't mean the rest of the document is. Please check that the article is not published ahead of print. This is a premium rate service offered by publishers, but libraries generally don't have access until it has gone to print. If renewing a book loan from the British Library, please can you let the library know if it is required for a couple of days or a full renewal.