Libraries Celebrates 25 Years with OhioLINK Borrowing
This year, OhioLINK Borrowing, also known as Patron-Initiated Circulation or PCirc by OHIO librarians and staff, will celebrate 25 years of serving the Ohio University community at the University Libraries. Ohio University was one of the founding members of OhioLINK and during its first week of operation, OHIO PCirc lent more books than any other Ohio school at the time.
OhioLINK Borrowing (PCirc) was established to help enable resource sharing among academic institutions in the state of Ohio. Since then, public libraries have joined through the SearchOhio service, adding a variety of material to the catalog. The PickUp Anywhere (PUA) service has also been added for students doing internships or distance learning, allowing them to request that material be sent to a school closer to them.
These services involving physical materials are currently suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Libraries’ buildings are currently closed, however, the Libraries’ electronic collections are still available for students, faculty and staff 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
PCirc will commemorate its 25th anniversary on May 1, 2020, and despite not being able to hold a physical celebration, will look back on the years that it has spent helping the community find the resources they need.
“PCirc [OhioLINK Borrowing] greatly expands the reach of the amount of items students can access,” said Katy Mathuews, the interim coordinating director of Specialized Collections and head of Collections Assessment and Access.
Mathuews explained that because of the PCirc department, Ohio University students have access to not only OHIO collections, but also collections from over 100 other institutions in the state. This means that students have access to over 46 million print books through the Libraries.
“If we do not have a particular title, students can request items through OhioLINK and receive them within 3-5 business days,” she said. “This helps support their studies and reduces the cost of purchasing material.”
George Cheripko, Library support specialist, has worked at PCirc since the department was founded in 1995. Back then, it consisted of a single room, which had previously been used for storage, a table and an ALICE terminal. Despite the upgrades and additions made to PCirc throughout the years, and changes to the program throughout the state, Cheripko said that the OHIO PCirc department’s mission has mostly remained the same.
“The area that has changed the most is the [addition] of the SearchOhio public libraries and the rise of PUA, or PickUp Anywhere,” he said. “Through work on committees at OhioLINK, I have advocated for both.”
Cheripko believes that maintaining OhioLINK Borrowing as its own separate department, which allows them to process PCirc books from start to finish, is one reason why the OHIO Libraries’ PCirc program is the best in the state.
“I believe we are the last stand-alone PCirc office [in the state],” he said. “By that I mean we do every aspect of the job in our work area. Other libraries have dispersed these duties throughout their libraries. We print the searches, pull the books, process the books, pack for shipping, unpack the incoming, process the incoming, check in returns and fix any errors or problems.”
Cheripko believes that PCirc will be around to help students for a long time.
“As long as students want to have physical materials to do research, we will be here,” he said. “Plus, we are a very adaptable group who can deliver almost anything. So as mediums change, we will change.”