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University Library Services

Interlibrary Loans

A guide about how to request material not held in our collections or available through our subscriptions.
× IMPORTANT: At the end of October 2023, the British Library experienced a major technology outage as a result of a cyber-attack. The outage affected their website and online systems and services, including On Demand which we use to supply digital articles and single chapters. As of now, this service remains offline. You can continue to submit requests and we will send these to other higher education institutions, however, please note that fulfilling your request may take longer.

Yellow background with blue text saying Interlibrary loans placing a request, next to a cartoon book.

Most members of the University of Sunderland are eligible to use our interlibrary loan service. Requests can be placed via Library Search by completing a short form.

Confirm that the material is not available by searching Library Search, ensuring you are signed in to view complete results. Some materials may also be available freely online, such as review papers, open-access journals, and government publications. We are not able to process requests for items we already have our collections or subscriptions, either in print or electronic.

If the material you need is a UK doctoral thesis, most are available to download free of charge from EThOS, the British Library’s electronic thesis service.

If the material you need is a print book or e-book, consider suggesting the title for purchase through our Suggest a Book scheme.

If you no longer need something you have requested, or you want to change it or give us extra information, please contact us as soon as possible. We will check if it is possible to cancel your request as, depending on how far the request has progressed, this may not be possible. If you are supplying extra information, we may be able to add this to your request if it has not been processed.