Inter-library loans

[Phillip Bigelow <n8010095@henson.cc.wwu.edu>]

For those who may have rather mediocre library services in their home town,
a last-ditch alternative (albeit an expensive one):
 
I finally found the electronic address of the CARL Uncover service (at the
bottom of a stack of papers...typical). See bottom of this post.  
  Apparently, CARL is an Internet service for purchasing re-prints of 
scientificarticles.   
You can search by author or title, and order the reprint from your computer 
terminal.  The fees vary, but are obviously going to be higher than if you 
simply ordered a photocopy from a distant library.  I discovered, though,
that not all paleontology-related journals are covered under CARL, but it
still might be worth a look.
  The CARL service seems to have many of the most recent scientific articles
available.  If you need an older paper, you may be out of luck here; in that
case, consider requesting a cheaper photocopy through standard interlibrary 
loan(if you have it at your local library). 

Searching CARL for articles is free; ordering is what costs you the $.  I think
CARL's fees are way too high, personally.  If you have interlibrary loan,
use that instead, and request a photocopy. CARL should only be used as a
last resort if every other alternative is too much of a hardship. 
I don't know anything about the illustration image quality on
reprints ordered through CARL, but I would assume that they would be as poor
as a photocopy.
  CARL can be used as a look-up bibliography for free. It is roughly similar
to GeoRef on CD-ROM in that regard.  The disadvantage of GeoRef is that it
cannot be used over the Internet because of licensing restrictions. 
   Using telnet, type the following:
         telnet pac.carl.org

p.s.  I know very little about this, so take everything said above with a
      healthy dose of skepticism.