Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery

Borrowing Information

Library Cards

All patrons must have a library card to check out books. Current UMBC students, faculty, and staff should use their UMBC Campus Card. Patrons from other USM institutions should use their campus ID card. All other patrons must purchase a Special Borrowers Card.

Special Borrowers include the following patrons:

Friends of the Library

High School Students

USMAI Alumni

UMBC Alumni

Parents of Current UMBC Students

Spouses of UMBC Faculty and Staff

UMBC Emeritus and Retired UMBC Faculty & Staff

Non-USMAI Faculty

USM Golden ID Card Holders

Others Not Covered by One of the Above Classifications

See Library guideline 256 - Special Borrower Privileges, for full details on Special Borrower privileges.

For more information, please see our page on Library Cards.

Loan Periods

• 28 days for Undergraduates, Alumni, and Special Borrowers
• Semester date for Graduate Students and UMBC honor students
• Faculty and Graduate Assistants receive a yearly due date of April 1
  

For more complete information about loan periods for various material, please see Library guideline 253 - Loan of UMBC Library Materials

Renewals

Materials borrowed from UMBC are now renewable online through the library's catalog. See our instructions for renewing items online. Any items that you are unable to renew must be returned by the due date or fines will accrue. If you do not wish to renew your items online, you may still bring them to the library to be renewed. We do not renew items by telephone.

Please note that Alumni (from ALL campuses), Special Borrowers, and Friends of the Library are limited to 2 renewals per item.

Holds - Requesting items from other campuses

You can place a Hold/Recall on any circulating item that is in the on-line catalog for any campus in the University of Maryland System, but which is not available in your library. The item(s) will be delivered to any campus in the USM that you designate. Please note that Alumni and Special Borrowers may not place holds on items from other campuses. You must first obtain a full record of the item using University System of Maryland: catalogusmai.

Material borrowed from other campuses in the USM System or through Interlibrary loan can be picked up at the Circulation Desk when it arrives. You will be notified by mail when the item arrives.

Recalls

When a person borrows a book, he/she is guaranteed to have that item for at least two weeks. After that time, every book is subject to being "recalled" and given an earlier due date. This only occurs when another person has placed a request for that same book and no other available copy can be found for the person through any other USMAI campus library. This system was set up to allow the quickest possible access for all users to materials owned by the USMAI libraries.

Returns

Material borrowed from any USMAI library can be returned to any USMAI library. It does not have to be returned to the library that either obtained it for you, or loaned it to you. However, all material borrowed from other USMAI campus libraries are subject to fines levied by the owning institution and should be returned on time.

See Library guideline 251 - Failure to Comply with Lending Guidelines, for full details.