Announcements

OhioLINK libraries have reached an extraordinary milestone with the successful upgrade of shared system software to support teaching, learning, and research for Ohio higher education. The on-time and on-budget project was the culmination of more than two years of planning and collaboration, encompassing the migration of more than a million titles.

The entire OhioLINK consortium, composed of 115 libraries at 86 four-year and two-year institutions of higher education across Ohio, is now fully operational on the state-of-the-art Ex Libris Alma/Primo VE system.

“This significant investment in Ohio’s digital infrastructure ensures that students and faculty at all OhioLINK member institutions benefit from faster, smarter, and more integrated access...

Clarivate Plc, a leading global provider of transformative intelligence, today announced a partnership with OhioLINK, Ohio’s academic library consortium, and SearchOhio, a consortium of Ohio public libraries, to develop a new library resource sharing consortial experience.

Nine of OhioLINK's member institution librarians have been selected to become Open Education Network Open Education-certified librarians in 2024. After completing an eight-month OEN course, librarians will be prepared to serve as advocates for OER, and to support and advise faculty interested in transitioning from commercial to no-cost-to-student teaching materials.

OhioLINK announces the selection of Ex Libris Alma, part of Clarivate™ (NYSE: CLVT), as the consortium’s next shared library services platform. In addition to Alma, OhioLINK will implement Primo VE and a suite of related products, including Leganto, Rapido, and Library Mobile, that will enhance services for users, library staff, and administration.

A team of applied mathematics students at Baldwin Wallace University has confirmed through a data analysis project that the state’s current delivery system is the most cost-effective way to transport more than six million books and circulating materials among Ohio academic and public libraries annually. This system allows library users greatly expanded access to library collections across the state by providing an efficient method for requested materials to be delivered locally.

“We are very pleased to have demonstrated that our current approach for the academic and public libraries’ statewide lending service provides significant savings for the state,” said OhioLINK Executive Director Amy Pawlowski.

The students, led by Brent Strunk, professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics, were...

OhioLINK has awarded grants to 29 faculty from 19 Ohio colleges in its third round of Affordable Learning Open Course Redesign Grants since March 2022. The program is intended to accelerate faculty adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) and remove barriers to use in order to save students’ money. Providing support and assistance for faculty to transition away from commercial textbooks has proved a crucial incentive.

To mitigate the cost of higher education for students, the Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK) launched the Affordable Learning Ohio initiative. The initiative is helping faculty members at Ohio colleges and universities develop, discover, and utilize no- or low-cost-to-student teaching materials, including Open Education Resources (OER), library-owned resources, and OhioLINK-negotiated Inclusive Access textbooks.

OhioLINK, a division of the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE), created the Affordable Learning Course Redesign Grant in March 2022 to help accelerate adoption of OERs and remove barriers to use. The program offers two grant funding cycles, in the spring and fall, to help faculty members identify OERs that complement their curricula.

“College affordability is a top priority of the DeWine-Husted Administration and the...

OhioLINK, Ohio’s academic library consortium, has entered into a 3-year transformative agreement with IOP Publishing (IOPP). The agreement provides OhioLINK member institution authors the opportunity to publish unlimited open access articles at no cost to the author and at no additional cost to OhioLINK institutions. In addition, OhioLINK library users have expanded reading access to 72 IOPP journals across the fields of physics, materials science, biosciences, astronomy and astrophysics, environmental sciences, and mathematics. The contract began on January 1, 2023 and will continue through December 31, 2025.

“I’m happy to be able to add these important benefits for our members without additional costs for our institutions or the state of Ohio,” said OhioLINK Executive Director Amy Pawlowski. “OhioLINK has enjoyed...

Affordable Learning Open Course Redesign Grants will help an additional 30 faculty members explore teaching with no-cost-to-student course materials. See the announcement for the full list of grant recipients.

OhioLINK has used additional Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) funding to purchase four new collections of shared digital books and streaming video. The new library resources support a broad curriculum for teaching and learning. Faculty can utilize two of the new collections for no-cost-to-student teaching materials, augmenting OhioLINK’s digital library of more than 180,000 digital books and other electronic information resources available to students and faculty at institutions across the state.