Ever noticed the

or the

or the

or the

and wondered what Document Delivery is?

No?  Well that’s a shame because the Dal Libraries’ Document Delivery service can often get material for you that you can’t find at Dalhousie but that you need for your research.  Document Delivery is affiliated with libraries worldwide and has especially close ties to the other Canadian Atlantic University Libraries (CAUL).  We even share the same document delivery management system which we also use to connect to other international document delivery systems like OCLC based in Ohio and RapidILL based in Colorado.

Document Delivery requests material from other libraries on your behalf – that means books get delivered to us for you to pick up at the Dalhousie library of your choice.  Articles from journals get delivered directly to your Dalhousie email as a PDF link.  Articles are normally delivered within 1-3 days as are books from the other CAUL libraries.  Books from libraries outside of the Atlantic region are normally delivered by mail so can take a week to several weeks to arrive depending on the location of the lending library.

Last year Document Delivery processed a total of 39,000 requests –  22,000 from Dalhousie patrons, of which 14,000 were for articles, and 17,000 from other libraries for their patrons.  And the best part – the service is free for Dalhousie students, faculty and staff.   So please keep us in mind when you need an article or a book for your research and you can’t find it at Dal.

For more information about this service, visit the Document Delivery web page.