the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), state-funded entities established under the sponsorship of the Ohio Board of Regents to support higher education instruction and research programs in the age of technology, electronic versions of materials such as complex satellite images, pictures of artifacts and paintings, maps, and numeric data from the United States government will be soon accessible via the Internet.

"Because the state's elected officials decided in previous budget periods to invest what was needed to create and sustain OhioLINK and the Ohio Supercomputer Center, Ohio is today a national leader in providing its colleges and universities shared, cost-effective access to high-speed computing, academic library holdings, and information databases," said Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Elaine H. Hairston. "This new project will further strengthen Ohio's leadership edge, and itserve as a source for research opportunities for students and faculty in computer science and related disciplines.

Information owned by OhioLINK-participating libraries that becomes part of this new system can eventually be made available statewide beyond the academic community, aiding K-12 education and broadening access to Ohio residents, much as the Central Catalog has done for the last five years.

OhioLINK is a consortium of 54 libraries from Ohio universities, colleges, community colleges and the State Library of Ohio. The Ohio Board of Regents determined the need for a network of libraries in 1989. In 1992, the system went online with a central union catalog of six university libraries. Now more than 500,000 students, faculty and staff have access to OhioLINK's integrated local and central catalogs, an online borrowing system,