[OPLINTECH] Two databases discontinued

[Stephen Hedges]

For many years, OhioLINK has graciously paid for an extension to their contract for EBSCO's "Communication & Mass Media Complete" (CMMC) and "Humanities International Index" databases, so that public libraries statewide could have access to these databases, too, through EBSCOhost. Due to continued depletion of OhioLINK's budget, we decided it was time this year to review this practice, to make sure OhioLINK's funds are used efficiently. Both of these databases are targeted at academic libraries, and indeed, in looking at the usage statistics from public libraries, the number of full text articles retrieved from CMMC could not justify the additional cost which OhioLINK has been paying. (The Humanities Index does not include any full text.) Additionally, many of the articles retrieved from CMMC would still be available through other EBSCO databases that are included in our EBSCOhost collection.

Therefore, public libraries will be dropped from OhioLINK's contract and will not have statewide access to these two databases after June 30 of this year. Users of ohioweblibrary.org and EBSCOhost should notice only minimal differences in their search results, but libraries that link directly to these two resources should plan to either remove their links after June 30 or make arrangements with EBSCO to purchase these databases locally.

If you have questions about this change, please contact http://support.oplin.org.

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Stephen Hedges, Director
Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN)
2323 W. Fifth Ave., Suite 130
Columbus, OH 43204
614-728-5250  ::  Skype & AIM: hedgesst