FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Candi Clevenger, Communications Manager, (614) 728-3600 ext. 329 or
candi@ohiolink.edu.
COLUMBUS (July 14, 2003)—Finding scholarly journal articles used to be a time-consuming process involving going to the library, consulting a periodical index, and then finding the appropriate journal on the shelves. Today, students and educators across the state have immediate, electronic access to scholarly research articles through the OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center (EJC). The EJC, which launched in 1998 with less than one million articles, recently expanded with the addition of the four-millionth article and three new publisher collections.
“The EJC is truly an innovative resource,” OhioLINK’s Executive Director, Tom Sanville, said. “It is one of the largest, possibly even the largest, collection of electronic journals run by a library consortium.”
The Electronic Journal Center is a growing collection of online journals that can be searched, viewed, and printed from the user's workstation. When the EJC debuted, it contained journal collections from two publishers. With the recent additions of Berkeley Electronic Press, Cambridge University Press, and Oxford University Press, the EJC has grown to include electronic collections from 33 journal publishers. Students, faculty, and researchers at 84 OhioLINK institutions now have access to more than 5,250 journal titles.
The OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center continues to be a heavily-used resource. More than 9 million articles have been downloaded statewide since 1998. The use of the service is still growing at 50% annually, with more than 3.5 million articles downloaded in the past 12 months.
“The continued, expanding use of the EJC proves that our students and faculty crave access to more scholarly research journals than Ohio’s academic libraries can afford to purchase individually.” Sanville said. “By participating in group electronic journal purchasing, OhioLINK libraries are able to offer a much wider range of journals.”
On average, each university is using more than 3 times more journals than it traditionally holds in print. Ohio’s smaller liberal arts colleges and its two-year community and technical colleges are lucky to carry a dozen or two of these titles in print, if any. Students and faculty at these smaller schools are now making use of hundreds of titles that were not available on their campus, using an average of 15 times the number of titles carried in print.
The Ohio Library and Information Network, OhioLINK, is a consortium of 83 Ohio college and university libraries and the State Library of Ohio. More than 600,000 students, faculty and staff have access to OhioLINK's integrated local and central catalogs, an online borrowing system, 100+ research databases including full-text resources, the Electronic Journal Center, a digital media collection, and document delivery services. For more information, visit the OhioLINK web site at www.ohiolink.edu.
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