Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those aren't free in most libraries I've been to and don't apply to everything (don't quote me on this, but since journals are basically subscription services, their articles aren't actually owned by the library and they might not be able to loan them out further).
Interesting. I've never been a patron of a public library in the United States that charged patrons fees for ILL, and neither of the universities I've attended charged for it, either. My own academic library where I work used to have a per-semester limit and charged for requests over it but we eliminated it for a number of reasons, one of which was that it was skewing our acquisition decisions. When we did charge, th…
None of that is unreasonably expensive, but I can see it adding up quickly if you need to order like half of the things in your references (which might happen if your institution isn't subscribed to one of the bigger journals in your field).