ILLiad FAQs

ILLiad is the electronic system you use to request an item through Interlibrary Loan. The name ILLiad can be thought of as an acronym for InterLibrary Loan internet accessible database.

1. You will find it easier to submit your interlibrary loan requests. With ILLiad, you enter your name, address, and other personal information into the system only once, at the time of your first request.
2. Your request will be handled more rapidly and accurately as problems relating to misinterpretation of hand-written requests are eliminated.
3. You can get many of your photocopies more quickly through Electronic Delivery.
4. You can get information about the status of your request through the Web at any time from any location without having to call the ILL Department.
5. Library personnel are able to serve you better because all data about your request and its handling is stored in a searchable database. We are able to respond quickly to your inquiries about your request. We are also able to gather statistical information about the performance of the libraries that lend to us, enabling us to make better decisions when choosing a lender to supply an item.

Some people might find it troublesome to have to log into ILLiad using a username and password. We believe this is less trouble than traditional paper and electronic systems which require you to enter your personal information with each new request.

In addition virtually all communication is via e-mail. People who do not regularly check their e-mail may encounter problems working with an electronic system such as ILLiad.

Your username and password allows us to give you secure access to information about your interlibrary loan requests. We can also enable you to edit your personal information such as your address or phone number.

Your password is your MTU ISO password. Forgot your password?

You need a Web browser that can handle forms, tables, and preferably Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). We recommend the current versions of either Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.

After you click the "Subscribe to Alerts Feed" link, you can add the url to your favorite RSS reader. There are many external feed readers available such as Thunderbird, SharpReader, BlogLines, My Yahoo, Google Reader, etc. By Summer 2007, Internet Explore(IE)7.0, FireFox 2.0 and Opera have the built in feed readers which make the RSS look and function more user-friendly in the browser. If you are using IE 6.0 or lower, in most cases you will see the XML code in the browser. More information about RSS.

Yes. Web browsers cache information and create a history file on the local workstation. This allows a subsequent user of the workstation to access the system under your name using the browser's Back button to recall a page from the cache, or by finding a page with your personal information in the browser's history file. If you are concerned about the security of your interlibrary loan requests, you can take the following steps:

• Access ILLiad only from your personal computer or an otherwise secure workstation.
• When using a public access workstation:
  1. Delete from the history file those pages that contain your personal information.
  2. Exit from the Web browser before you leave the workstation. This prevents the Back button from accessing the pages you were using.

From time to time we purge older records from ILLiad. Our policy is to keep requests online for several years in order to comply with record keeping requirements of the copyright law.

Many libraries ship photocopies of articles to us in electronic format. With ILLiad we deliver these files to your ILLiad account in PDF format. More information on Document Delivery.

System Problems or InterLibrary Loan Questions: InterLibrary Loan office at (906) 487-3207 or e-mail to ill@mtu.edu.
Technical Support Questions: E-mail anytime to wwwlib@mtu.edu.

The technology that we use sends a Session ID to be stored on your machine. You can refuse this cookie and still be able to use ILLiad without any problems.

For information on creating your own account in ILLiad, just click on this link and follow the instructions.