Courier and interlibrary loan services
If you are looking for specific literature that you have been unable to find in the Zentralbibliothek Zürich, you can order documents via courier, post or interlibrary loan from libraries in Switzerland and abroad.
Ordering via swisscovery
The holdings of the Zentralbibliothek Zürich can be accessed via the search portal swisscovery. swisscovery links together scientific libraries from all over Switzerland and catalogues more than 30 million books, serials, periodicals and non-book materials as well as more than 3 billion electronic articles.
Courier
The ZB Zürich is linked to many libraries via courier. Media that are available for loan from those libraries can be ordered directly in swisscovery for collection.
ETH-ZB courier
Postal dispatch
You can also have documents from most libraries sent directly to your home using swisscovery.
For an overview of courier and postal dispatch fees and delivery times, see Fees.
Ordering from other libraries in Switzerland and abroad
If you are looking for a document that you cannot order yourself or is not present in any of the libraries in swisscovery, we will be happy to order it for you.
Order form for books and other media available for borrowing
Interlibrary loan services for libraries
The ZB Zürich provides interlibrary loan (ILL) services.
What items do we send?
- All documents from our holdings that can be borrowed for home use, excluding DVDs.
We do not send:
- works that are 100 or more years old
- Master’s theses (categories Lic phil I and Master)
- unbound periodicals
We can only send newspapers if they are available on microfilm and were not published in Zurich.
Digitised versions of out-of-copyright books (published before 1900) should be ordered via eBooks on Demand.
For items from the special collections, staff of the collection concerned will decide whether copies or an interlibrary loan can be arranged.
Information for Swiss libraries
Swiss libraries should open a library account. They can then order direct via swisscovery (selecting “Postal dispatch” as the pickup location).
Information for foreign libraries
Order form for documents and copies in the UB Zürich and ZB Zürich on interlibrary loan
Documents from the ZB Zürich can also be ordered direct via OCLC WorldShare (OCLC symbol: ZD0; payment only using IFM).
Extension enquiries should be sent to us via e-mail.
The fees for our interlibrary loan services can be found in the overview of fees.
Contact
Interlibrary loans