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Pritzker Legal Research Center


Law Journals' Guide to Source & Cite

This guide is designed to help journal students locate and request materials for source and cite checking assignments.

When to use ILL

When to use ILL

Students should use interlibrary loan when they would like to use an item that is not available to them at Northwestern University. The library will attempt to obtain an item from another library.  These scenarios include:

1. A book that a Northwestern library does not own or is missing.

2. A book that a Northwestern library owns but has been checked out. 

3. A section or chapter from a book that is not available at any Northwestern Library.

4. An article that is not available electronically or at any Northwestern Library.

 

How to Request an ILL

To request an article, chapter or book via Interlibrary Loan, email the full citation to loans@law.northwestern.edu. Library staff will request the items from another library. When we receive them we will scan the relevant pages and save them to a shared OneDrive folder for your journal. 

Please be sure to include:

  • Citation: title, author, publication date, edition (if applicable), and relevant page number(s)/pincite(s) for each book needed.  
  • Journal, volume & issue and article author (ex. NULR 114.2 Gowder)

Include as much citation information as possible, including edition, date, publisher, etc. Do not use abbreviations. 

You can search WorldCat for the correct edition of the book. It is most helpful if you include the OCLC number (located in the Details section at the bottom of an item record on WorldCat)

Only submit requests for newspaper articles if they are not available anywhere electronically.  Bluebook Rule 16.8 states that where print sources are difficult to obtain, citation can be made to an electronic source.  This means for many newspaper requests you can use the online version.  If an online version is not available, you can submit an ILL request.  You must provide the complete date (month, day, and year) and page range. Requests cannot be completed without a date and page number. If you cannot find a page number, ask a reference librarian for help.

Please note that items may take anywhere from two days to two weeks or longer to arrive. The turn-around time depends on how many copies are available among other libraries, how long the lending library takes to process the request, shipping time, etc.