7. Resources Beyond Harvard
Interlibrary Loan
The Harvard College Library Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service allows readers to borrow materials from non-Harvard llibraries. ILL requests may be submitted online.
Please check HOLLIS before placing your request to be sure that Harvard does not own the item you need.
You do not need to find the location of materials yourself before making your ILL request, but you may find it helpful to search other libraries' catalogs, to confirm that the item you are seeking does exist and the citation information you have is correct. You will find a listing of Catalogs Beyond Harvard through the Harvard Libraries site. Some of the more frequently consulted catalogs are listed below.
WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog of materials cataloged by over 41,000 libraries from libraries in the United States and abroad.
Center for Research Libraries (CRL)
CRL is a consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries holding over four million newspapers, journals, dissertations, archives, government publications, dissertations, and other traditional and digital resources. The Center has special strength in publications and archives from many developing nations. Harvard's membership in CRL entitles Harvard-affiliated researchers to borrow CRL materials through Interlibrary Loan. (Note: some CRL holdings appear in the HOLLIS Catalog; nevertheless, such items still must be requested through ILL.)
Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog
The Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog allows simultaneous searching of the holdings of many major libraries in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain, and the UK; it functions then as a sort of European Union Catalog, and a counterpart to the mainly US/Canadian WorldCat.
lib-web-cats
lib-web-cats is a resource of over 4,000 libraries worldwide. This database provides the URL to web-based library catalogs, and is searchable by library name, or geographically by city, state, and country.
Archive Finder (formerly ArchivesUSA)
Archive Finder (now including ArchivesUSA and NIDS/UK Ireland) describes over 206,200 collections of primary source material housed in thousands of repositories across the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
ArchiveGrid
ArchiveGrid contains nearly a million descriptions of archival and manuscript collections, divided between brief catalog descriptions and collection guides linked from the web sites of the individual repositories. Records for many Harvard archives and manuscripts plus over 2100 Harvard collection guides are included.
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