Interlibrary Loan Policy

February 2026

Policy Statement

Christchurch City Libraries provides an interlibrary loan (interloan) service to enable members to borrow items from other libraries and suppliers in New Zealand and overseas.

The provision of interlibrary loan services are an important area of Christchurch City Libraries’ content provision and are reflected as such in the Christchurch City Libraries’ Content Development Policy. Interlibrary loan services enable library members access to a broad range of content resources and specifically addresses accessibility for items that are beyond the scope of the Christchurch City Libraries collection.

Christchurch City Libraries subscribes to the Te Puna Interloan Service available through Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa National Library of New Zealand’s Te Puna Services.  This enables Christchurch City Libraries to create, monitor and respond to interloan requests from New Zealand, Australian, and international libraries and document supply services. In return Christchurch City Libraries updates its holdings on OCLC’s WorldCat regularly so that other libraries may discover and request items from the Library.

Interlibrary loans are recognised as a value-added service and therefore charges apply

Purpose and scope

1. Definition of Interlibrary Loans

The Interlibrary loan service is a co-operative subscription service whereby libraries supply, loan and borrow items to/from each other on behalf of library members.  Items loaned and borrowed may be physical items such as books, CDs or DVDs, or may be copies of articles from books or journals.  

The interlibrary loan service may obtain articles and documents from commercial document supply services.

2. Interlibrary Loan Purpose

The Interlibrary loan service extends the scope of locally available resources and enables members to access a global collection.

3. Interlibrary Loan Scope

Library staff assist members to explore resources already held by Christchurch City Libraries to meet their needs, this is supplemented through the interlibrary loan service.

Items already held by Christchurch City Libraries cannot normally be requested through the interlibrary loan service.  This includes reference only items.  Christchurch City Libraries will consider interlibrary loan requests for alternative formats of a title.

Requests for interlibrary loans will be assessed to determine whether the item should be purchased for addition to the library’s collection.  Items that meet the criteria identified in the Content Development Policy and are available for purchase, will be ordered and, in most cases the interlibrary loan request will not proceed.

Christchurch City Libraries’ responsibilities to other libraries

As part of Christchurch City Libraries’ subscription to Te Puna Interloan Service, the Library agrees to supply items to other libraries in order to fill their members’ requests.

Items from rare book collections, selected reference items and items in high demand by Christchurch City Libraries’ members will not be made available to other libraries as part of the interlibrary loan service.  Wherever possible, all other items will be made available to other libraries.

Interlibrary loan service

1. Loan Conditions

Items borrowed on interlibrary loan are issued to library members on their Christchurch City Libraries account.  At any time, members may only have the maximum loan limit issued on their card whether this is items from the Library’s collection and/or interlibrary loan items.  For loan limits, refer to the Circulation Policy.

Terms of use for an interlibrary loan item are determined by the lending library.  These terms of use can include a requirement for the item to be used “in library” only.

A member may request one renewal of an item before the due date.  A request for renewal is forwarded to the lending library, and it is at their discretion that a renewal is granted.  Christchurch City Libraries cannot guarantee renewals, and if it is not granted, the item must be returned by the due date.

Articles from journals and excerpts from books requested through the interlibrary loan service will be supplied as either a paper or electronic copy that the member retains.

Library members obtaining more than 25 items (including articles from journals) in one calendar year will pay an increased charge for each item supplied after the 25th. 

2. Interlibrary Loan Requests

Any Christchurch City Libraries member can place interlibrary loan requests at any time. Details about the service are found on the library website. Requests will normally be filled within 14 days of the request being placed.

Christchurch City Libraries does not guarantee to provide access to all resources requested through this service.  A specific resource may not be supplied if:

• it cannot be obtained in a cost effective or timely manner,
• the owning library does not make it available for interloan, or
• the resource is inconsistent or outside the scope of Christchurch City Libraries’ policies or what can reasonably be expected of Christchurch City Libraries to supply.

Members are notified when the item is available for collection or will receive progress updates if there will be significant delay in obtaining the item. If an item is not collected by the due date, it is returned to the supplying library and the charge still applies.

3. Urgent Interlibrary Loans

The Library offers an urgent interlibrary loan service to its members.  This service consists of:

• Priority action of request.
• All reasonable effort by the Library to supply the request within two working days. Due to outside factors, such as availability and delivery methods, Christchurch City Libraries cannot guarantee delivery details.
• Notification via the member’s preferred method, when the item arrives.

There is a charge for this urgent service; this is not refundable if the item cannot be supplied, or if delivery is later than required. .

4. International Interlibrary Loans

Items obtained from overseas may take longer to supply to the member. International interlibrary loans may attract a higher charge due to the greater cost of obtaining and returning them.

Charges

As a value-added service, interlibrary loans attract a partial charge; this applies to all Library members. Current charges are available on the Libraries website.

Charges apply from the time of placing the request and is non-refundable unless the item cannot be supplied. The bill is created upon issuing an item or by the Interloans Team for non-collection or electronic supply of an item.

Charges can be paid when the item is collected from the library or in the case of an article supplied electronically, within 30 days of the charge being applied.

If a member loses or damages an interlibrary loan, all replacement related costs charged by the lending library and any processing or administrative costs incurred by Christchurch City Libraries, will be the responsibility of the member.

Overdue items are treated according to the provisions of the Circulation Policy.

References and related documents

Download Interlibrary Loan Policy (February 2026) [135KB PDF]