Announcements

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- OhioLINK, Ohio’s academic library consortium, has received $2.5 million from the Ohio Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) funds through the Ohio Department of Higher Education. The funds will be used to purchase digital resources for Ohio colleges, such as streaming video and e-books, to supplement online research, as well as provide instructional support for a wide range of curriculum, including physical and applied science courses that traditionally have not been taught online. GEER is part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which authorized federal economic aid in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The CARES Act includes several funding streams, such as GEER, to support the education...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (December 15, 2020) — OhioLINK announces that the State Library of Ohio has awarded grant funding to support OhioLINK’s 2021-2022 effort to introduce the wide range of work done within the academic library to first-generation and economically challenged students. The program's objective is to to encourage students to consider a career in libraries by engaging them in paid, stimulating, experiential learning with 1-to-1 support and mentorship and to make academic libraries a more welcoming workplace.

OhioNET will be the program partner. Funding for the Ohio Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Competitive Grant comes from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).

See the State Library of Ohio’s announcement here.

Ohio Department of Higher Education Chancellor Randy Gardner has named Amy Pawlowski executive director of OhioLINK, Ohio’s academic library consortium, effective immediately. Pawlowski joined OhioLINK in 2013 as deputy director for operations and e-licensing. She has served in an interim capacity since February.

“Amy has proven her leadership through this challenging pandemic environment,” said Chancellor Gardner. “Her valuable expertise in libraries and technology will ensure that OhioLINK continues to find innovative ways to make higher education more accessible and more affordable for Ohio’s students.”

In addition to her new role as executive director, she will continue to lead negotiations with publishers and information vendors to acquire shared electronic resources for OhioLINK’s...

OhioLINK is pleased to announce that print borrowing among member institutions will resume on August 10th. The statewide print lending service, which temporarily halted operations amid response to COVID-19, will again support students and faculty as they return to campus for fall. Statewide, patrons borrowed on average more than 25,000 print items per month from OhioLINK libraries during the eight and a half months that lending services were operational in fiscal year 2020.

“While print borrowing is dwarfed by our members’ online access to OhioLINK’s e-books and e-journal articles, there are books and printed materials that are simply not available digitally—especially in the humanities,” said OhioLINK Interim Executive Director Amy Pawlowski. “We are happy this vital OhioLINK service will...

No Shelf Required is an open source of information on books and digital content for information professionals, including publishers, editors, authors, librarians, and educators. Editor and author Mirela Roncevic quoted Judy Cobb for her June 24th piece on digital accessibility.

"Judy Cobb, Manager of Digital Platforms at OhioLINK, Ohio’s academic library consortium serving 117 member institutions, says that the challenges on this front are enormous for libraries. Academic libraries want to ensure inclusive access for their users and, according to Cobb, for OhioLINK this includes more than 30 platforms and well more than 35 million pieces of content. 'Libraries are under increasing pressure to ensure all platforms and content meet the highest digital accessibility standards and we need...

OhioLINK announces the departure of Executive Director Gwen Evans. Deputy Director Amy Pawlowski has been named Interim Executive Director, effective February 28, 2020.

Statement from Gwen Evans…

OhioLINK is determining how it can support the sustainability of the OER materials created through the Ohio Open Ed Collaborative. We will continue to gather cost savings data. In addition, we are working to identify barriers to OER adoption and make recommendations for practical ways to address them. We'll continue to negotiate and monitor inclusive access agreements with commercial textbook publishers as long as those agreements provide value to our students.

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2020/02/11/guest-post-an-update-to-ohiolinks-affordable-textbooks-initiative/?informz=1

Note: Numbers for Inclusive Access came from publishers. Numbers for OER came from internal analysis.