Access
The Clark State Library Catalog (LOIS) contains records for the 36,000 books and videos in our library. Obviously, we won't have every book that you might want. We belong to an organization called OhioLINK. OhioLINK's Library Catalog has records for all of our books, videos, etc., and almost all of the other college and university libraries in the state of Ohio. That's millions of records for over 25 million volumes and videos. Many of them are available for borrowing and the ones you're looking for can be in your hands in approximately three days.

Click the Reference button on the library's home page and then select OhioLINK Library Catalog. If you are at home, you can go to the OhioLINK catalog directly: olc1.ohiolink.edu/search/.

Searching
The OhioLINK search screens look much like the LOIS screens and they perform the same functions. You can search by author, title, word (or keyword), and subject.

Author: Type in the author's name, last name first. The comma is optional.

Title: Type in as much of the title as you know. There is no need to use capital letters.

Word: Type in a word or words from the title or topic of what you're looking for. Look at some of the records that result. In the record you'll notice that it lists subjects that the book covers. You can click on that subject and get a list of all the books on that subject.

Subject: If you know what the subject is called, you can search that way. Often you'll be told what the correct terminology is, and the screen will ask you if you want to search for that correct subject.

Results.
When your search has finished running, you will see a list of titles that fit your search. You can further limit the results of the search using a variety of criteria. For example, you may want to find the most recently published materials. In this case, you could use the limit feature to find only those books published after 2003.

The limit feature also helps you identify materials of a particular type (books, maps, audiovisuals, etc.), with a certain word in the title or subject, or written by a certain author.

You can mark titles in your final list and save the list for later. You can even e-mail the list to yourself to use at home or when working at another computer. Click here for help with creating an online bibliography.

To see the full record of a book in your title list, just click on the title. This step will take you to a page that gives you the author, title, publishing information, and subject. Many bibliographic records also show the table of contents. By clicking on the statement of how many OhioLINK libraries own this item, you can see which libraries have the item.

When to Search the OhioLINK Library Catalog

• When you're looking for a book which is not owned by Clark State.
• When you don't know exactly what you're looking for, and you want to explore a larger database.
• When you want to borrow a book, and Clark State's copy is checked out to someone else.
• For fun--mysteries, novels, romances, sci-fi.

If you get lost and don't remember which database you're in, the upper right hand corner of the search screen will always tell you.

One of the remarkable features of OhioLINK is that you can request a book from another OhioLINK library and have it delivered to the Clark State Library in about three days. You need an ID with a Clark State library barcode in order to do this.

Updated: 07 April 2004