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While university presses are relatively common, particularly in Association for Research Libraries institutions, the identity and organizational location of the university press as part of the library is relatively uncommon. Even exceptions, such as at New York University and Wayne State University, represent relatively traditional university presses, which appear to have been placed under the library for organizational convenience or historically accidental reasons rather than as part of a clearly articulated library mission. The University Libraries at the University of Cincinnati, on the other hand, came to believe that a university press was an appropriate extension of their library task, growing clearly and in a fundamental way out of their primary library mission. But such a press was not a traditional university press. The result is an unusual but successful project.

“Public librarians are not interested in collection development issues.”

OhioLINK, a consortium of Ohio academic libraries in both the public and the private sector ranging from major research institutions to community colleges, is one of the nation's first major attempts to create a virtual, statewide library system. More than just linking the holdings of participating libraries within the context of a 48‐hour delivery system for books and journal articles, OhioLINK provides the platform as well for the statewide delivery of commercial and other databases, Gopher Internet access, and experimentation with the development and testing of new information tools. OhioLINK also represents an intriguing and creative approach to state funding and automated system design. In terms of bold imagination and cooperative power, OhioLINK follows in the footsteps of that other major Ohio institution, OCLC.

It should come as no surprise that the 1993 EDU‐COM conference in Cincinnati, Ohio, showcased one of North America's most interesting experiments in automation—Ohio's OhioLINK. Unusual in this conference, traditionally focused on technical issues, was the focus on OhioLINK as representative of new politics, a new funding strategy, and a new library paradigm, rather than OhioLINK described in terms of mips, routers, and bandwidth.

While the primary reason for a library’s collections is their use as widely and broadly as possible, the issues clustered around interlibrary lending are central to redefining what libraries will be in the twenty‐first century. Discusses interlibrary lending among OhioLINK libraries ‐ a consortium of all libraries located in Ohio‐based colleges and universities. It describes OhioLINK and talks about how both the sharing of books and the sharing of articles are being tackled. It concludes with how some interesting changes in traditional interlibrary loan thinking are changing the way in which libraries are being envisioned generally in Ohio.

In this emerging computer‐information age, library instruction goes far beyond research familiarity with books. With the advent of both library OPAC (online public access catalogs) and end‐user searching of online and CD‐ROM (compact disk read only memory) databases, the need for improved instruction in library use approaches a new plateau. These new technologies are forcing libraries, as well as their patrons, to move from traditional information handling to a total information support system.

Conducting research in an academic library requires more time and tenacity than many people have. Keith J. Stanger suggests ways to rectify this problem.