FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COLUMBUS (June 9, 2003)—From the moment they register for kindergarten, until life's last library card expires, Ohioans have access to a vast collection of electronic resources. The Statewide Core Electronic Information Collection (SCEIC) provides the necessary resources to support quality education, a skilled workforce, business growth, and lifelong learning in Ohio. A Library Services Technology Act (LSTA) grant was recently awarded by the State Library Board to help fund the addition of more resources to this core collection.
The current collection of 22 databases from EBSCO Publishing will be enriched by the addition of comprehensive online reference resources, an image library, a newspaper collection, and 13 literature databases. The new resources will be available to all Ohioans beginning in July 2003.
“The SCEIC is filling a critical need by providing resources that were formerly beyond the reach of Ohio's primary and secondary schools,” Theresa M. Fredericka, executive director of INFOhio, said. "These resources provide the content and the tools that teachers, librarians and parents need to help our children succeed in the classroom and in life."
At the heart of the new additions to the SCEIC is the Britannica Online set of encyclopedias and the Oxford Reference Online collection. These two collections contain a wealth of electronic reference resources including comprehensive and abridged encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, and the Enciclopedia Universal en Espaņol.
The AMICO Library, a growing digital collection of more than 100,000 works of art from museums around the world, and the NewsBank collection of newspapers will also be available statewide. NewsBank provides full-text access to 17 Ohio and 13 non-Ohio newspapers, including major dailies like the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune.
Thirteen literature databases from Chadwyck-Healy/Proquest, that were previously unavailable to Ohio's K-12 schools, will also be added to the SCEIC. These databases include more than 6,000 works of drama and fiction, 324,000 poems by American and English authors, twenty-one versions of the Bible in English, and selected texts by Shakespeare.
To pay for the additions to Ohio's SCEIC, the LSTA grant will provide approximately $1 million in funding per year for five years. Libraries Connect Ohio (LCO) will provide an additional $380,000 per year in combined state funds.
If every school, college, university, and public library were to purchase these electronic resources individually, the cost would be in the multi-millions of dollars. With ever-tightening local budgets, few libraries can afford these resources on their own, let alone the space to store them. Electronic access is also much more convenient, faster, and cheaper than traditional interlibrary sharing of physical materials.
The Library Services and Technology Act is administered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a federal agency that fosters innovation, leadership and a lifetime of learning through the support of museum and library programs. Under LSTA, funding occurs through one of two broad based purposes: 1) technological innovation and electronic linkages, and 2) services to the underserved. In Ohio, LSTA funds are administered through the State Library of Ohio.
The SCEIC is a priority of Libraries Connect Ohio. LCO is a collaborative effort between Ohio's three statewide library programs and the State Library of Ohio. The three library programs are INFOhio, the state's virtual library and information network for K-12 libraries; the Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK), the program for college and university libraries; and the Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN), which provides all 250 of Ohio's public library systems with high-speed Internet access.
A robust SCEIC ensures that:
For more information about the LCO partners, see:
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