The Kent State University Libraries in Kent, Ohio, USA, requested and received a US Depart-ment of Education grant of $60,425 to wire the twelve-story main library building with a fiber optic backbone, connect the backbone to the campus network, and create 120 workstation locations. The result of the project is to provide students and faculty with immediate access to rich information sources through local, national, and international networks. Not only will access to existing resour-ces be greatly increased, the network infrastructure was deemed necessary for the University com-munity to reap the enormous benefits of the developing Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK). This paper describes Kent's plan for expanding information technologies locally and participating in the statewide library network.

Kent State University has a long-standing commitment to employ new information technolo-gies that connect users with resources. Since the 1960s, Kent has been actively engaged in library automation. Kent was one of the forty-eight founding members of OCLC and took advantage of this network access to convert 99.9% of its holdings to machine-readable records. As a proponent of network access, Kent offered OCLC workshops to catalogers nationwide in the 1970s, imple-mented subsequent OCLC systems for interlibrary loan and serials check-in, and provided public-access OCLC terminals for users.

In 1986, Kent moved to take advantage of its machine-readable records by acquiring NOTIS, a fully integrated library system. All components, including cataloging, online public catalog, circula-tion, and acquisitions, are implemented. Access is provided to all departments on campus, remote users through dial-in and the Internet, and to the seven Kent State University regional campuses located throughout northeast Ohio.

Increasing public access to external information resources is a strategic direction for the Libraries. Online database searching was introduced in the mid-1970s, reaching a peak of more than 1,200 searches per year by the mid-1980s. Operated on a cost-recovery basis, this service offers mediated searching of more than 600 databases available through DIALOG, BRS, Wilson, and STN International. Free access to full-text databases is provided through LEXIS/NEXIS. Additionally, many of the more than forty CD-ROM databases in the Libraries are available on a local area net-work (LAN). An active instructional program introduces library technology to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to faculty, through classroom presentations and specialized workshops in the Libraries' Group Instruction Laboratory. Annually, more than 9,500 users receive library instruction.

The Libraries also make electronic resources available to the campus via the University's mainframe computers. In addition to the online public catalog, these resources include financial and statistical databases, such as COMPUSTAT, CRSP Stock Files, and major Inter-university Consor-tium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) data sets. The Libraries also make the vast resources of the Internet available to all library users through dedicated terminals in the çämain library referen-ce center. Using these terminals, faculty and students search other universities' library catalogs, use large-scale data and text files, read electronic journals, and contribute to topical discussion lists.

While Kent librarians have a solid history of providing an expanding array of information services to users, we realize that economies of scale offered by collaborative networking endeavors are the key to capitalizing on new technologies. To this end, the Kent State University Libraries are now on the verge of participating in the single most exciting and innovative library networking pro-ject ever undertaken in higher education, OhioLINK.

2. OHIOLINK

OhioLINK is designed to be a statewide, fully-integrated library and information system. It will include a union catalog of the holdings of seventeen university libraries plus the State Library of Ohio, a gateway to electronic resources, and a document-delivery system. Building on the strengths of previously developed statewide library systems, such as CARL in Colorado, ILLINET in Illinois, and MELVYL in California, Ohio's major university libraries will appear to users as a single resour-ce of more than 19 million volumes. Users will be able to search a variety of bibliographic and full-text databases and make circulation requests online for specific materials to be delivered to their institutional libraries within forty-eight hours. OhioLINK will play a significant role in Ohio's economic and educational development by providing quick, comprehensive access to information for citizens in higher education, business, industry, and government. OhioLINK is expected to foster partnerships between researchers in education and industry by serving as a statewide information sharing network (Ohio Board of Regents, 1989).

OhioLINK originates directly from and is supported by the Board of Regents of the State of Ohio. Throughout the years of planning, preparation and several name changes, OhioLINK has enjoyed substantial fiscal support. From an initial $422,000 operating budget for planning efforts to millions of dollars in capital and operating allocations, OhioLINK continues to receive extremely strong support from the Ohio Board of Regents, the General Assembly, and the Governor. Vigo-rous support, even in today's troubled fiscal climate, emanates from the apparent value to the future of Ohio's economy and educational system.

Actual planning for OhioLINK began in 1987 and involves Kent State University, twelve other state-assisted universities, two free-standing medical schools, two private universities, and the State Library of Ohio. More than 100 staff members from these institutions developed the system specifications leading to the release of a Request for Proposal (RFP) in August 1989. Eight vendors responded with proposals: Ameritech, CARL, Data Research Associates, GEAC, Innovative Inter-faces, Inc., NOTIS, UNISYS, and VTLS. After an exhaustive evaluation which included two-day system demonstrations by each vendor, Innovative Interfaces, Inc. (III) was selected to develop the OhioLINK system. Innovative Interfaces software runs on the UNIX operating system. All of the universities will use Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) machines and Innovative Interfaces software, both of which are being provided through state government funding.

The first implementation phase included six universities: Bowling Green State University, Case Western Reserve University, Central State University, Miami University, University of Cin-cinnati, and Wright State University. Each of these institutions either had no integrated library system, had already begun installing the Innovative Interfaces system, or faced a critical need to replace their existing integrated system. Because none of these conditions were applicable to Kent, we decided not to implement OhioLINK until the current second phase. When Kent finishes implementing OhioLINK in mid-1994, the statewide union database will be substantially streng-thened by the addition of Kent's holdings.

3. IMPLEMENTATION AT KENT

The local implementation of the OhioLINK project at Kent State University has four primary goals:

• To provide the faculty and students of Kent access to the OhioLINK databases and provide persons associated with other Ohio universities access to Kent's abundant library resources of 2.4 million volumes.

• To fully install all components of the OhioLINK system locally including the acquisitions system, the circulation system, the serials check-in system, and the public catalog, in order to deve-lop cooperative collection development and management programs with other OhioLINK libraries.

• To participate actively in OhioLINK resource sharing by borrowing and lending materials through the OhioLINK system.

• To create an environment which supports a variety of other networking activities. Users will have access to other computer and library resources on the campus network, including the univer-sity's mainframes, LANs, and CD-ROMs, as well as the Internet.

The major objective to achieving these goals is the acquisition and installation of a network infrastructure throughout the main library building. The twelve-story main library serves as the primary library on campus, houses the overwhelming majority of the collections, and supports most of the disciplines at Kent. Principal service areas within the main library include: circulation and reference services on the first floor; periodicals, microforms, and interlibrary loan services on the second floor; acquisitions and technical processing services, administrative offices, and audiovisual services on the third floor; the United States government documents depository collection and ser-vice on the tenth floor; the university archives and our rare books and manuscripts on the twelfth floor. The remaining floors house the bulk of the Libraries' collections and study rooms, and provide terminal access to the online public catalog, but contain no service areas.

While the state government of Ohio is providing funding for each institution's necessary mainframes and software to start-up OhioLINK, each university is responsible for local hardware costs such as terminals and wiring. This is why Kent decided to seek a $60,425 federal grant. The DEC machines for OhioLINK at Kent will utilize the emerging campus ethernet to provide access across campus and to connect to the state-supported network for access to the OhioLINK central machine site, other local sites, and the Internet. The transition from Kent's current IBM-based NOTIS system to OhioLINK's DEC-based system will necessitate abandoning IBM's proprietary telecommunications Systems Network Architecture (SNA). The Kent Libraries will need to acquire and install fiber optic wire, twisted pair wire, and the associated hardware.

Kent's OhioLINK implementation plan complies with and complements the University's long-range networking plans which call for fiber optic cable to connect all buildings on campus. For internal building communications, University plans state that fiber optic riser cables will run through a building to Local Area Service Closets (LASC) from which Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) will extend to termination RJ11 wall jacks. This will allow buildings, such as the main library, access to the campus network as subnets.

The main library is well-situated to establish a network infrastructure. Currently a Cabletron NB20E Bridge connects one Cabletron MR5000C Repeater to the campus thick ethernet. Through the Cabletron MR5000C Repeater, three Novell LAN fileservers and one Cabletron MRX Twisted Pair Hub are connected to the campus network and carry TCP/IP traffic. One LAN fileserver provides multiple access to the Libraries' CD-ROMs, the second is used primarily by the Audio-visual Services staff members to manage their film and video rental system, and the third belongs to the School of Library and Information Science. The Cabletron MRX Twisted Pair Hub furnishes network access for reference librarians from the microcomputers located in their offices. All of the microcomputers associated with the above fileservers and twisted pair hub represent an initial base of OhioLINK-ready workstations. In addition, the LANs will take advantage of the proposed new wiring to extend resources to all service points within the main library.

Specifically, OhioLINK implementation will result in a fiber optic connection on the first floor of the main library to the existing campus thick ethernet using a Cabletron MiniMMAC Hub. Fiber optic wire will be extended from the Hub to six different Local Area Service Closets located throughout the main library. Twelve-port concentrators will be located at each of the six service closets, from which UTP wire will be extended to wall jacks located on all floors of the building for both public and staff workstations. The heaviest concentrations will be in staff and services areas on floors one, two, three, ten, and twelve. While it is expected that most wall jacks will be utilized immediately, this configuration will provide a great deal of flexibility in terms of locating work-stations for both library users and staff members.

It should be noted that the $60,425 funded for this project did not include funding for work-stations. Presently, the Libraries have numerous microcomputers that can be connected to the net-working infrastructure as it is established.

4. BENEFITS

We expect that all academic programs at Kent will be strengthened by the installation of a network infrastructure within the main library. The new infrastructure will permit flexibility in the future growth of network access and will accommodate the integration of subnets. For example, a scholar could search the OhioLINK union catalog, CD-ROM databases mounted on a LAN, and worldwide Internet resources, all from a single workstation. With OhioLINK, students, faculty, and other users will have direct and almost immediate access to published materials and specialized collections far greater than otherwise available. Research and teaching will be greatly enhanced by OhioLINK's document-delivery component. Currently, borrowing requests for Kent users require two to three weeks to satisfy. With OhioLINK, most printed documents will be delivered to a user within days; smaller documents will be received by telefacsimile within hours; electronic information formats will be transmitted within minutes.

Through OhioLINK's plan of cooperative resource sharing, universities in Ohio will manage materials budgets more efficiently and extend the range of collected knowledge offered to the citizens of Ohio. Economies of scale will be realized as agreements for electronic information databases are negotiated at the state level and as universities that now purchase and maintain different library com-puter systems migrate to the same library system. Compatibility of hardware and software among all participating libraries will be gained through the utilization of DEC machines, a UNIX operating system, and Innovative Interfaces, Inc. software for OhioLINK.

5. FUTURE OF OHIOLINK

Development of OhioLINK at the state level continues at a rapid pace. Phase II has begun and intends that two-year community colleges will be the next group of libraries incorporated into the system. In addition, several pilot projects are underway. OhioLINK has been working with the UMI company to offer an article image-delivery system. Currently, several UMI electronic indexes are available on the OhioLINK system. The goal now is to create a process where a user can search an electronic periodicals index, such as Periodical Abstracts, find a specific citation that also includes information about which OhioLINK libraries own the periodical title, and provide an option for the user to simply request that a digitized image of the article be sent to a laser printer at the local institu-tion.

It is also expected that OCLC's FirstSearch will be made widely available through OhioLINK using a Z39.50 interface. This should allow users to search OCLC FirstSearch databases with the familiar screens and searching protocols of the Innovative Interfaces OhioLINK software.

One recently completed major project for OhioLINK was the review of various serials table of contents services. The major serial vendors for Ohio's state-assisted universities were asked to supply machine-readable datafiles of information regarding subscriptions, such as specific titles and their general Library of Congress classifications. At the same time, major serials table of contents vendors were asked to respond to a request for information which included supplying machine-readable datafiles of the serial titles covered by their services.

Numerous aspects of each serials table of contents service were evaluated based on the machine-readable files, including titles unique to each service, titles common to all the services, and subject distribution among the services based on Library of Congress classification. Also examined was the information from the serial vendors, including the number and distribution of subscriptions across the state.

Primary consideration was given to the number of titles covered by a table of contents service and the type of information covered, such as articles, book reviews, and editorials. In addition, the currency of the information, the accuracy of the information, the cost of the service, and the ability to link the titles covered by a service to our own institutional holdings were reviewed.

It was interesting to discover that the list of serial titles common to all of the table of contents services constitutes a necessary core of western language materials, which permitted our focus to shift to just the unique titles offered by each service. After noting which table of content services index the greatest number of unique titles in science, technology, medicine, and business, and after reviewing title lists to generally determine the extent to which the titles were scholarly, a recommen-dation was made to pursue a contract with one of the vendors to purchase a site license for mounting the service on OhioLINK machines and running the table of contents service using Innovative Interfaces' OhioLINK software via a Z39.50 interface.

6. CONCLUSION

The above sampling of both local and statewide OhioLINK projects demonstrates the powerful information infrastructure that is emerging in Ohio as libraries attempt to respond to expanding infor-mation resources and technology. OhioLINK will enable libraries to decrease duplication of little used information resources while increasing the acquisition of unique sources. Centrally mounted databases will provide more cost effective identification and delivery of information. Increasing the breadth of information available through OhioLINK will allow institutions to increase locally the depth of information in selected areas.

An essential component of the OhioLINK project is the implementation of a local infrastructure utilizing fiber optic cabling. Success will be determined by measurable increases in requests from other OhioLINK libraries for materials owned by Kent, measurable increases in requests from Kent users for materials owned by other OhioLINK libraries, and the formal development of cooperative collection agreements among Kent and other OhioLINK libraries. With OhioLINK's capability for users to identify and request items directly online, Kent expects to realize at least a 30% to 50% increase in both interlibrary lending and borrowing.

Success will also be determined when a researcher at Kent State University can sit at any one of hundreds of computer workstations located throughout the university or sit at a home micro-computer and identify and request a list of needed information resources required for a specific project. Bibliographic tools for such a task may be located at Kent on CD-ROMs, located centrally within Ohio on the OhioLINK system, or located internationally via the Internet. Some of the sources may be books which can be delivered to the researcher within two days. Other resources may include journal articles which can be delivered to a nearby laser printer within minutes. Still other sources might be statistical datafiles or digitized maps which can be delivered electronically to the workstation within seconds.

While OhioLINK will definitely be an evolutionary process, it does appear that success may be forthcoming within months rather than years.
 

REFERENCES

Ohio Board of Regents. OLIS, Ohio Library & Information System: Connecting People, Libraries, & Information for Ohio's Future, 1989.