Featured Profiles

Most would agree that having a second set of eyes review a paper or article is a useful, and crucial, step in the writing process. Taking a different view, especially one sharpened by more experience, others can find mistakes we missed, correct awkward phrases and make suggestions for clarity. Imagine how much more essential this process becomes when the paper you’ve written was not in your native tongue.

For Berenice Watts, a nursing student at Marion Technical College (MTC), eTutoring through eStudent Services helped her academic knowledge and understanding of the English language. Originally from Mexico, Watts is a native Spanish speaker....

It sounds like something out of the X-Men movies: lose a body part, print a new one. But while we have the technology to 3D-print prosthetics, researchers still have to fine tune the details.

Bridget Fricke, a bioengineering student at Wright State University, is part of the fine-tuning process. Fricke and fellow biomedical engineering classmates in a senior capstone class designed and produced a prosthetic foot – customizable and scalable to the individual.

Due to the cost of 3D printing materials, industry standard information, and research databases, the group had to get creative with its $500 project budget. That’s where library resources came in, including...

Each year, lung cancer kills more men and women worldwide than any other cancer, accounting for about 160,000 deaths in the U.S. alone each year. Rose Zolondek is doing something about it by attacking the disease at its roots. And OhioLINK's vast Electronic Journal Center is playing a major role in Zolondek's research. 

As a mom, Ivy Carlsen looks out for everyone, from her five kids and her husband to her classmates at Washington State College of Ohio (WSC) in Marietta. As she juggles the roles of parent, nurse technician, and student, she uses any tool she can to save time and money.

That’s why she, her husband, and two of her children use OhioLINK to borrow textbooks instead of buying them. The statewide library consortium has resulted in significant savings – both in time and money – for the family. Carlsen estimated that the family has borrowed more than 50 textbooks through OhioLINK. This has saved...

As a linguist and cultural preservationist, Daryl Baldwin has overcome a challenging conundrum:

How do you revive a language when there are no speakers?

Baldwin has dedicated his life to revitalizing the language and culture of his ancestors, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. After teaching himself the language, he has worked as the director of the Myaamia Center, a joint venture between the Miami Tribe and Miami University, to develop the culture- and language-based educational materials and programs for the tribal community.

Thanks to several grants and the publicity...

A simple conversation turned into a project that unraveled a wealth of knowledge for one Ohio State University-Lima math major. Find out how Hali Finfrock used OhioLINK resources to learn how our numbers got their shapes and evolved through the years. 

Alisa Strauss, Ph.D., has an eye for harmoniously blending the unrelated – so much so that you might wonder how they ever existed separately. The University of Cincinnati anthropology professor has developed a novel technique to apply the concepts of human culture and behavior to her newest venture into graphic design, after earning a master’s degree in the subject. Some of her obscure research topics led her to OhioLINK’s resources which in turn led her to a design stint – creating the graphics for OhioLINK’s Pelotonia jerseys. Pelotonia is a bike tour with one goal – end cancer – involving riders and volunteers from throughout the state of Ohio and beyond.

“I looked...

As a voracious consumer of research publications for her master’s thesis, it is Kara Geremia’s dream that her own published research will become part of OhioLINK’s Central Catalog, listed among the hundreds of academic literature pieces that she referenced in her thesis work.

Geremia recently completed her master’s degree in computational chemistry from Wright State University. Geremia describes computational chemistry as using computers to solve chemical problems that cannot be computed by hand and then shaping a hypothesis based on the solutions.

“I fell in love with the idea that complex problems could be theorized in a practical and efficient way,” Geremia said.

Geremia’s research (check...

Through his research on anaerobic organisms that grow in the human intestine, Miami University Associate Professor of Microbiology Dr. D.J. Ferguson is working toward a cure for heart disease. Ferguson’s widely published research explores how these organisms break down common compounds during the digestive process. Some of the organisms convert these compounds into other compounds that lead to atherosclerosis, a leading cause of heart disease, while other gut organisms do not.

Ferguson said that one of his key research tools is OhioLINK because it allows him to keep up-to-date, even on a daily basis, of the research going on in microbiology.

“I’m always looking up papers related to my...

As a small institution, Oberlin College has much to gain from sharing. Jason Belitsky, professor of chemistry, knows this well, as he has shared both resources and research with his students. Belitsky imparts on his students the value of OhioLINK for journal articles and books. He assigns students an area to look up and guides them through using OhioLINK to find articles related to their assigned area of research.

“At Oberlin we have certainly a smaller library, so for a small school like us to be part of OhioLINK is great,” he said. “We have access to all kinds of stuff that we wouldn’t have otherwise.”

Oberlin College is...