CWMARS at the State Library

You may have read our posts about Interlibrary Loan at the State Library. In case you missed them, or in case you want a quick recap: full-time, permanent state employees can request books via Interlibrary Loan (ILL) by filling out a form or by emailing interlibrary.loan@mass.gov. ILL, a staff-mediated service, can only be used to request work-related materials. What do you do then, if you’re looking to read that New York Times Best-Seller you heard about in the news? What if you’re looking for a light beach read to take on vacation with you?

This is where the CWMARS network comes in! CWMARS, or Central and Western Massachusetts Automated Resource Sharing, is a network of 165+ libraries from around the Commonwealth who have partnered together to create a set of shared resources. If the State Library doesn’t own that beach read you’re interested in, perhaps another CWMARS library owns it. You’ll simply search for that title in our catalog and place a hold on it via your library account. It will then be delivered right to the State Library for you to pick up.

You can request titles in several different formats including physical books, e-books, audiobooks, Kindle, large print, and more. Before you start, you’ll need to request a library card from the State Library. You can do that using our online form found here. Once you have a card, go to our online catalog and log in with your State Library credentials. Now you’re ready to start searching for your favorite books!

Use the search bar at the top of the catalog to search for a title, keyword, author, or more. Once you find an item you’re interested in, click on that title and you’ll be brought to that item’s record. There you will see a “Place Hold” button. Click on that and you’ll be prompted to fill out a brief request form to officially place your hold.

Once you place a hold on a title, go to your library account and take a look at your Pendings Holds. There you’ll be able to see how many people are “in line” ahead of you for the item before it will ship to the State Library for you. You can see this by looking at the “position” of the hold on your title. If there isn’t anyone else using this book ahead of you, the lending library will process your hold request and update the status to “In Transit,” meaning the book is on its way to the State Library.

You can also cancel a hold and suspend a hold. Suspending a hold allows you to select a specific date that you would like your hold to activate. If you suspend your hold, this essentially puts you back in the active hold line on the date you chose. For example, on the date you choose to have your hold activate, if there are already 10 people “in line” for the book ahead of you, you will be placed 11th in line on that date. This is a great feature to use if you already have a couple of books you’d like to read and know you won’t have time for a new one if it arrives. Essentially, suspending a hold lets you defer the arrival date of your item, while not having to remember to place that hold later.

Our YouTube video provides a great summary of how to request a library card, search for books, and place holds, as does our previous blog post. Questions? Contact us at reference.department@mass.gov.


Jessica Shrey
Legal Research Reference Librarian