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Research 101: Finding Books & Ebooks: OhioLINK

Get the basics on books & library catalogs!

What is OhioLINK?

OhioLINK is a consortium, or group, of college and university libraries in Ohio that have come together to share resources.

As a member of OhioLINK, Ohio Dominican University Library provides students, faculty, and staff access to the following:1

  • Over 46 million items, including books, DVD's, and more
  • Over 100 research databases
  • Over 24 million journal articles
  • over 100,000 e-books
  • 85,000 images, videos and sounds
  • 58,000 theses and dissertations from Ohio students

If you'd like more information, visit the OhioLINK site.

Reference:

1. About OhioLINK. (2017). Retrieved December 06, 2017, from https://www.ohiolink.edu/content/about_ohiolink.

Accessing OhioLINK

Access the OhioLINK resources through the library website or within One Search.

To access from the library home page, click on the link for Catalogs and then OhioLINK:

Screenshot of Library Catalogs page

If you are already in One Search, type in your search terms and select OhioLINK from the drop-down menu:

One Search home page with OhioLINK as the search option

Accessing and/or Requesting OhioLINK Items

Our online books, or ebooks, will each have either a link to the online text. If it's a book in print a link that says to "check for availabiitiy," in which case the library might have the book in the building or the book might be available from another OhioLINK member library.

Accessing Ebooks in OhioLINK:

Our online books will each have a link to the online text. If you find an ebook you would like, simply click on the link, Available Online:

Record in One Search of an OhioLINK Ebook

Requesting Books from an OhioLINK Library:

If you find a book in print that you would like, click on the link, Check for Availability:

Record in One Search with link Check for Availability

If the item is available, you will have an option to Request It:

Screenshot of One Search OhioLINK Request button

Be sure to sign in first so that you can request the item be sent to ODU for you to checkout;

Screenshot of One Search signin link

Tip #1: Allow 5- 7 business days for processing an OhioLINK request.

Tip #2: If you have requested an OhioLINK item, when that item arrives at ODU Library, you will receive an email notification letting you know that you can pick it up and check it out with your ODU ID card.

Two Additional Options for OhioLINK Books:

If you go to the Other Options section of the book’s record, which is just below the OhioLINK Request option, you may have these options:

  • If an OhioLINK library nearby had a copy, rather than requesting it be sent to ODU, you could go there and check it out with your ODU ID
  • If a book were available for use only in an OhioLINK library, you could go there and read it there.

Tip: Before going to another library, make sure you know the following—this will save you time: • Where visitor parking is • Whether the book is actually there • Contact information for the library in case you have questions If you would like assistance with this, our librarians would be happy to help.

Returning your OhioLINK Items

You can return your OhioLINK items to ODU Library once you have finished with them, whether you checked them out from ODU Library or from another OhioLINK library, and we will ship the items back for you..

Take the Challenge!

Let's look for the book You, Happier, by Dr. Daniel Amen. Do the following 2 searches in OhioLINK, and we'll compare the different results:

  • A keyord search for the book
  • A title search for the book using Advanced Search

Once you've done each search, compare the results you find and then click on the links below to compare what you found with what we did.

Using a simple keyword search for You, Happier, we found over 45,000 results! Fortunately in this case, the top two were highly relevant--exactly matching our title and by the author we wanted.

If, however, you didn't find an exact match at the top of you results, 45,000 would be too much to sift through. In that case, using the Advanced Search and doing a title search or adding the author to the search might help.

By doing a title search in the Advanced Search option for You, Happier, we found less than half the amaount of results than what we did with a keyword search.

You'll notice the top two still coming at the top of the list, with other titles that have the phrase "you happier" with or without the comma we put in our search.

Now do a search in OhioLINK for Catholic and Dominican, and answer the questions below.

At the time this guide was created, the keyword search for Catholic and Dominican returned 973 results. This number is displayed above the search results.

Of those 973 results, 844 were books and ebooks.

Screenshot of OhioLINK search results

You will receive an email, sent to your Ohio Dominican email address, when the item is ready to be picked up.

Most items take an average of 5-7 business days to arrive.