Would you like to borrow an item that the Mercer County Library System (MCLS) does not have in our catalog? The MCLS provides an Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service to borrow materials from libraries outside of the MCLS at no charge to accommodate the needs of patrons. 

Complete and submit the online Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Request Form below to ILL request an item be loaned to you from another library outside of the MCLS. The ILL Department will contact you if they encounter any issues in fulfilling your ILL request. This service is often useful for temporarily obtaining specialized, expensive or older items.

Please visit our Suggest for Purchase page for requests of newer items the MCLS may be able to purchase and add to our catalog instead of temporarily obtaining through ILL.

For more information regarding ILL through the MCLS, please review our full ILL Policy.

Please contact the ILL Department at (609) 883-0245 or mclill@mcl.org with any questions or concerns.

Guidelines for Interlibrary Loan Requests

1. ILL requests can only be accepted from MCLS cardholders.
2. Please check to make sure the item you’re interested in requesting through ILL is not already available in our catalog.
   • The ILL Department will not fulfill ILL requests for items already available in our catalog with the exception of damaged, lost and missing items.
3. The ILL Department will accept three (3) active ILL requests for physical items and three (3) active ILL requests for articles at one time. 
   • “Active” ILL requests include requests that are currently processing as well as ILL items that are currently on hold and checked-out. 
   • ILL requests become inactive when the ILL Department cannot fulfill the request or when the ILL item has been returned to one of our nine MCLS branches.
4. The ILL Department will not initiate ILL requests for the following materials:
   • Electronic materials with the exception of articles
   • Fiction Blu-rays and DVDs
   • Launchpads
   • Music CDs
   • Playaways
   • Video Games
5. ILL requests may take up to four (4) weeks to fully process before they become available.
6. ILL items available for pick-up are held by the Circulation Department for five (5) days.
7. ILL items circulate for a total of four (4) weeks.
8. One-time renewals on ILL items are not guaranteed and should be requested directly through the ILL Department at by phone at (609) 883-0245 or email at mclill@mcl.org.