Gone are the days of old where the interlibrary loan department is hidden away in the far back dark corner of the office space. Interlibrary loan is important to both the patron and the staff. In the past, the interlibrary loan was tucked away in a remote corner of the library. Today, it is up front and most of the time in full view.
             Interlibrary loan is essential to the vitality of libraries of all types and sizes and is a means by which a wider range of materials can be made available to users. In the interests of providing quality service, libraries have an obligation to obtain materials to meet the informational needs of users when local resources do not meet those needs. Interlibrary loan is the process by which a library requests materials from, or supplies materials to another library. The sole purpose of interlibrary loan is to obtain, upon request of a library patron, materials not available in the user's local library. We live in an age of expanding information, growing technology for sharing that information, and ever increasing demands for academic endeavor.
             The interlibrary loan is an important service because individual libraries agree to share their collections and to supply materials on demand to another library for their patron use. The effectiveness of this resource sharing system depends largely upon the distribution of borrowing and lending. When a library is part of this loan-sharing program, those libraries should be willing to share their resource no matter what the size of their library is. This will make the impact of lending not so strenuous to each library if all libraries take on their part of loaning. This way there aren't just a few libraries that are overwhelmed with requests. It should be a well-known fact that libraries must be willing to lend if they wish to borrow, that is what makes the whole success of interlibrary loans. This program of lending and borrowing should only be ...