It's three in the morning, the library's closed, you need to order a book no-one's ever heard of, and you don't want to leave your dorm room. Sound like a hopeless situation? Not anymore.
Less than two years after joining the OhioLINK program in January 1996, Oberlin is the college that uses it the most, except for a specialized medical college. Since its inception in 1992 The Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK) has grown from a system of six universities to a network of 56 universities, community/technical colleges, and private colleges. The system provides access to more than 4,500 simultaneous users at 104 locations, serving more than 500,000 students, faculty and staff.
The draw of OhioLINK comes from the fact that its entire program is on-line and accessible from its website. The ability to access 66 research databases and more than 6.4 million records from its member institutions at all times of the day has been a particular draw for Oberlin students.
"I do most of my studying in my room in the evenings and at night. It's great to be able to use OhioLINK from my room instead of finding the time during the day to get to the library," first-year Melina Larkin said.
Once a work is requested from OhioLINK it is pulled off the shelf by the staff at the appropriate institution and is then trucked to the local circulation desk by Pony Express. "It's so easy and fast," said junior Briana Knull, "and we're hooked to so many other schools; you can get basically anything you want."
The question is, however, why do Oberlin students use OhioLINK so much? "Compared to some of the other institutions the kind of work students are having to do here requires more specific resources," Allison Gould, head of circulation at Mudd, said.
"I think we're doing more research than Oberlin's libraries can handle," first-year Jessica Rose Rossi said.. There's no way that one library can support so many college students."
Oberlin's future use of the program, however, is unclear. "I don't know what to expect as to what Oberlin students need," said Gould. OhioLINK is still relatively new and many students still have not needed it. "I've never used it but I imagine it's a good resource," sophomore Abbie Paine said.
Gould said students may just not be aware of it. "I expect as people become more aware of it people will use it more," Gould said.
"I think we'll notice more [of a change] in lending our materials to new members," Gould said. Being involved in the program requires more than just borrowing books; it requires allowing the rest of the program access to Oberlin's collections - including the Conservatory library and the other specialized holding of Oberlin.
A concern that arises is whether or not students will be handicapped by having these materials on loan through OhioLINK when they need them for their courses. "We have not yet experienced that," Gould said.
We definitely worried about that before we joined. We talked to other member libraries and we got some reassurance. There is a way of saying that the on-campus demand is such that they can't be lent."
More and more on-line resources are being added to the OhioLINK program, including the Institute for Scientific Information Citation Indices and the Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare, the complete text of 11 major editions of Shakespeare's works, 24 separate contemporary printings of individual plays, selected apocrypha and related works, and more than 100 adaptations, sequels and burlesques from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
According to Gould, OhioLINK still has "lots of ideas" for the future.
Copyright © 1997, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 126, Number 10, November 21, 1997
Contact us with your comments and suggestions.