Columbus, Ohio – In the recent FY 2015-2016 Ohio Capital Budget Bill, the State of Ohio showed its commitment to Ohio’s intellectual and technology resources by allocating $12 million to OhioLINK for the purchase of consortium’s permanent digital library collection and another $2 million to support capital improvements for regional, high-density book depositories.
The Capital Budget is generally enacted every two years to fund the most pressing construction and maintenance needs of state government, schools and higher education, with priority given to improvements that boost job creation and economic growth.
Founded in 1992, OhioLINK blazed a trail by being one of the first statewide academic consortia for sharing printed library books. As the organization grew, the consortium expanded service offerings to include robust, permanent digital materials.
“OhioLINK’s overarching objective is to provide as much access to scholarly resources to as many students, faculty and researchers as possible,” said Gwen Evans, executive director of OhioLINK. “We received an increase of 33 percent over the previous allocations for the purchase of digital content, which had been flat for some time. This unparalleled level of support allows OhioLINK member institutions to keep up with the rising cost of digital content. The depository allocation to the institutions will allow needed repairs to maintain the long-term environment for protecting their investments in print content.”
Five OhioLINK consortia members administer the regional depositories, which provide Ohio’s public universities with remote storage of permanently held library materials in an environment designed to maintain the long-term physical viability of the collection. The administering institutions are The Ohio State University (Ohio State University Book Depository), Bowling Green State University (Northwest Ohio Regional Depository), Miami University (Southwest Ohio Regional Depository), Northeast Ohio Medical University (Northeastern Ohio Cooperative Regional Library) and Ohio University (Southeast Ohio Regional Depository).
OhioLINK is a member of the Ohio Technology Consortium (OH-TECH), a division of the Ohio Board of Regents. Other members of OH-TECH include the Ohio Supercomputer Center, the Ohio Academic Resources Network and eStudent Services.
