If an ILL request is denied

Sometimes an ILL request is denied by the lender that received the request.   There can be many reasons for this.  It may be that it may be checked out to one of the lender’s patrons and thus not available for sharing.  If the request is deemed incomplete or inaccurate, the lending library staff should not take the time to correct it.  Perhaps the item was recently published, and the lender has a policy of not sharing new items for a few months.  It may be in a non-circulating collection.  There could be numerous other circumstances.  The borrower should respect the denial because the ILL process is a courtesy.

In any case, if an item is not available for ILL, the lender should quickly either send the request on to the next possible lender (this is frequently done in library networks) or contact the borrower and explain why it is not possible to complete the transaction.  

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