OhioLINK is pleased to announce the launch of the Electronic Reference Books Collection. This collection contains special-topic reference books—encyclopedias, handbooks, biographical collections, guides—from ABC-CLIO, an educational reference publisher. One hundred twenty-six electronic reference books are currently available. The initial OhioLINK Electronic Reference Books Collection will grow to a total of approximately 270 books.
The collection is available at http://rave.ohiolink.edu/ebooks/reference/home. Remote access is available using the same URL.
Catalog records for the initial set of books should be available in the central catalog in the next few weeks. Even though the e-book system has a search capability, we expect that primary access will be to individual titles via the catalog.
The OhioLINK community has been waiting a very long time for these books. The original agreement with ABC-CLIO was to have these books available electronically early in 2001. ABC-CLIO attempted to develop their own site for the books, but then abandoned the effort. They arranged to mount some of the books at netLibrary, but use of the books there is restricted by netLibrary's simultaneous usage policy. So OhioLINK acquired the XPAT search engine from the University of Michigan Digital Library eXtension Service (DLXS). The software is a successor to the Open Text software, which was acquired years ago for the Chadwyck-Healey full-text databases.
OhioLINK's Chat with a Librarian service is expanding. Now, two pilot programs allow you, the user, to chat with a business or health sciences librarian from a participating OhioLINK library and have your research questions answered online.
The new health sciences chat service will provide research assistance to faculty, students and researchers in the health, allied and life sciences. It will be offered Monday through Thursday, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. and also from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. To chat with a health sciences librarian, go to http://chat.ohiolink.edu/healthsci/.
The business chat service will offer assistance to business faculty, students, and researchers Monday through Thursday, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. To chat with a business librarian, go to http://chat.ohiolink.edu/business/.
Both pilot programs will run from January 5 through May 13, 2004.