Because of the depth of the research you (PsyD students) are doing for your doctorates, you will need to go beyond the full-text books and journals databses that we provide. For articles your primary index is PsyINFO. For books your primary index is WorldCat.
Interlibrary Loan (or ILL) is a service the SDCC/SCS Library provides for students and faculty that obtains materials that the library does not own nor has access to. The Interlibrary Loan forms are available on the SDCC/SCS Library website.
This service is free to students. That said, now I will make some amendments to that statement. You can submit your ILL requests for free (at the public libraries, just submitting a request costs $5 each). The SDCC/SCS Library is covering the cost of submitting the ILL.
There are two types of Interlibrary Loans: books and articles.
Books are relatively easy to obtain as long as they have not been published within six months of the request (no library is going to send out a brand-new book to another library who should have purchased it themselves). We also have a pretty good chance of finding a library that is willing to loan it for free.
Article requests are different. On the ILL periodical form you will be asked how much you are willing to pay for this article. (Unlike requesting books which generally can be requested free of additional charges, asking for a periodical involves locating and copying the article = staff time & copying fees.) Some libraries will copy for free, but this is rare. Generally, the cost of copying an article is between $8-15. This might seem steep, but contrast that to driving to SDSU, for example, paying for parking and copying, and factor in the time spent and the ILL charge is a deal.
That said, if you find that a local library has several articles that you need, I would encourage you to go that library and make the copies.
The Library Guide How to Guide #4: Finding Full-Text (this was handed out to you) explains who to locate the full-text of an item when you only have a citation.
