Sitting in the middle of campus, the Booth Library is hard to miss. The three-floor building is host to 1 million volumes of books, movies, recordings and periodicals, as well as an online database.

One service the library offers is the Interlibrary Loan system. If Booth Library does not have the source a student is looking for, they can get it from another school library.

“We have something called I-Share. We work with 86 libraries in Illinois,” reference librarian Janice Derr said.

Eastern students can also use their Panther Card at all 86 libraries in the I-Share system.

Derr said there is also a system called WorldCat, a worldwide catalog that Booth Library uses to get resources from other libraries around the world.

“This may take a bit longer depending on where we get it from,” Derr said.

Larry Auchstetter worked for the Interlibrary Loans department of the library for 19 years before moving to Library Technology Services on the top floor of the library. Auchstetter said students and faculty can ask for anything they want, and the library will usually find it.

There are two ways to request an interlibrary loan. On the Booth Library home page at http://library.eiu.edu, there is a link to get one under “Services,” or students can fill out a form at the circulation desk for either a copy or a loan. A copy is an article that gets scanned and emailed to the student, and a loan applies to everything from books to movies to CDs.

The speed of the delivery depends on the other library’s reaction time, but it usually takes three days. Books can take anywhere from three to 10 days to arrive. Both Auchstetter and Derr said to plan interlibrary loans ahead of time because it is rare for things to show up the day the loan request is sent out.

Steve Brantley, head of reference and instruction services, said walking tours of the library are offered every semester at 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday. These are offered during the first four weeks of the semester.

“We just give people a very basic orientation to the building and some of the services and try to answer any questions they have,” Brantley said.

Students can also ask for individual tours at other times that are convenient to them.

Brantley said it is important for students to ask for help when they are stuck on a project, because it is possible the librarians have seen the project before and have helped people in the past.

“Maybe we know that professor, so we can work with the student and sometimes the professor to figure out exactly what is being asked of the student,” Brantley said.

Samuel Nusbaum can be reached at 581-2812 or scnusbaum@eiu.edu