Since the 1960s, man changes have taken place in libraries of all types throughout the world. In the U.S., the most significant forces accelerating the pace of change in libraries have been the revolutions in computer, information, and telecommunications technologies. In the 1960s, the development of several major applications of computer technology in libraries provided the foundation for subsequent development, including the MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) format by the Library of Congress, the Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLARS) by the National Library of Medicine, the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC--now renamed the Online Computer Library Center) for online shared cataloging and resource sharing, and large computerized databases by major indexing and abstracting publishers (e.g., the Chemical Abstracts Services). Building on these, the following technological advances have stimulated drastic changes every five to ten years:

2. CHALLENGES TO LIBRARIES

In addition to the rapid transformation in computer, information, and telecommunication technologies, libraries everywhere also face with following challenges:

The traditional concept of ownership in collection development is gradually being replaced by access to information and knowledge without regard to location and format. True resource sharing among libraries through networking has become the common desire and growing practice.

3. THE OHIOLINK APPROACH

The formation of OhioLINK (Ohio Library and Information Network) among academic libraries in Ohio, beginning in 1990, for cost-effective networking and resource sharing has proved to be a successful approach. This paper will address the following topics.

The formation of OhioLINK was a direct result of a year-long study by a blue-ribbon panel appointed in 1986 by the Ohio Board of Regents (the governing body for post-secondary education in Ohio) to study library needs of state universities. In its report,1 the panel made several recommendations. The most important was to implement "as expeditiously as possible a statewide electronic catalog system." Collateral recommendations included retrospective conversion of remaining paper cataloging records to MARC format, development and implementation of a statewide delivery system for library materials, and a plan for a cooperative preservation program.

To plan and implement these recommendations, a Steering Committee was established by the Regents with a number of task forces and subcommittees composed of librarians, systems staff, and faculty members from the initial 13 state-supported universities, two large private universities, two independent state-supported medical universities, and the State Library of Ohio. Through the investment of thousands of person-hours in hundreds of meetings, several planning documents were completed. Most important of these were a request for information (RFI) issued in August 1988,2 a planning paper issued in November 1988,3 a request for proposal (RFP) issued in August 19894 and an overview, Connecting People, Libraries & Information for Ohio’s Future, issued in 1989.5 Based on the responses to the RFP, a commercially developed library system by Innovative Interface, Inc. was selected in 1990 and installations began in 1991.

After the system was installed in all 18 initial participating libraries in 1994, OhioLINK expanded to cover all 23 state-supported two-year colleges and many private colleges and universities in Ohio. As of this writing, fifty-six academic libraries in Ohio have joined OhioLINK, providing access to more than 4,500 simultaneous users at 104 locations serving more than 500,000 students, faculty and staff. An overall description of OhioLINK can be found at http://www.ohiolink.edu/about/what\_is\_ol.html.

3.2. THE OHIOLINK VISION

At its inception, a basic concept of OhioLINK was to use the existing statewide telecommunication infrastructure built by the Ohio Academic and Research Network (OARnet) to link the library systems in all the participating libraries -- each with a common computer hardware (from Digital Equipment Corporation - DEC) and software (provided by Innovative Interfaces Inc.) platform. By means of this linkage and a central union catalog with location information and access to real-time circulation records from local systems, users of all participating libraries can access both online local and central catalogs and can initiate borrowing requests for items not available locally. Through a 48-hour-maximum courier service, all interlibrary borrowing can be completed within two or three days inmost cases.

The shared vision of OhioLINK can be summarized as:

Even though OhioLINK is still developing and expanding its capacities in resources and services, some concrete results have already been achieved. These are:

3.4.1. Systems Architecture

The OhioLINK systems consist of 56 individual campus systems and a central site in a distributed system. Each local system has its own CPU, OPAC, acquisitions and serial control module, user data file and circulation system. The central site system (which was moved from Dayton to Columbus in August 1997 and now located in the Ohio Supercomputer Center) includes the central bibliographic catalog (derived from local records) with locations, citation and full-text databases (including electronic journals), and massive multimedia databases. While different databases utilize different search engines (and user interfaces), these are increasingly being consolidated into two common search engines adapted for OhioLINK\rquote s needs.

3.4.2. Governance

OhioLINK's Governing Board is composed of representative provosts (chief academic officers), the chair and vice chair of the Library Advisory Council, and the liaison staff from the Ohio Board of Regents. It reports directly to the Regents. The Governing Board hires the Executive Director and oversees the financial and administrative operations of the Headquarters.

At the policy-making and planning level, the Library Advisory Council consists of library directors from the 18 initial libraries and representatives from the two-year colleges, private universities and colleges, law libraries, and medical libraries. The Chair, Vice Chair, and the immediate past chair constitute the Coordinating Committee.

At the operational level, there are the Lead Implementors and four standing committees. The Lead Implementors is made up of the systems librarian or other designated staff member of the participating libraries. The four standing committees whose members are nominated by library directors and appointed by the Executive Director are:

The funding of OhioLINK has come from a state appropriation to the Ohio Board of Regents and is in two forms: an Operating Budget and a Capital Budget. The Operating Budget pays for personnel, office facilities, administration, recurrent software and database licenses, and other operations. The Capital Budget pays for computer hardware and software at the central site, the initial local systems, the purchase of reference databases (where owned rather than licensed), database conversion, infrastructure support of the Ohio Academic and Research Network, etc. In 1998, the Operating Budget is $5,157,000 and the Capital Budget is $2,500,000.

With the exception of the initial local system and some partial subsidies for group licensing of electronic journals that have been paid by central funds, all the other expenses for the maintenance and upgrading of local systems and operations as well as ongoing electronic subscription costs (including access to some databases, such as Lexis-Nexis) are the responsibility of each library.

3.5. WHAT'S NEXT FOR OHIOLINK?

Because of the initial success of OhioLINK, many have viewed OhioLINK as the model for effective information access and resource sharing in an electronic network environment. However, from our vantage point, we see opportunities to do more as we enter the fast lane of the information superhighway of the 21st century. Several strategic priorities have been identified for action in the immediate future.