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Sometimes you won’t be able to order the item you want from British Library On Demand. These are the most common reasons.

Sometimes British Library On Demand might not be able to supply the content you want.  The most common reasons for this are:

The item is on loan to another customer

If the item you want is already on loan, we will put your order on a waiting list send the item out to the next person on the list when it is returned. The customer who has the item will not be able extend their loan, so we can get it to you as soon as possible. We will not charge you until we supply the item and you can cancel your order at any time while it’s on a waiting list.

On Demand supplies copies of journal articles under agreements with the Copyright Licensing Agency and publishers. If you are ordering a journal from an article that is not covered by our agreements, we may not have the authority to reproduce it or supply it in the way that you want.

Although the British Library has one of the largest and broadest collections in the world, we don’t have a copy of everything. If we don’t have the item you want, we can provide in-depth searches of other libraries in the UK or overseas.

For some orders you’ll need to provide us with a bit more information to help us find the item you need. If the information you gave us is not detailed enough or is incorrect, we will ask you to check the reference you've given us or provide more information about the item. You should resubmit the order with the new information in the normal way.

If the item you want has been published very recently, we might not have received it yet. If we expect to recieve item you want, we will add your order to a waiting list and send it to you when it arrives. We will not charge you until we supply the item and you can cancel your order at any time while it’s on a waiting list.