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Services

OCLS delivers efficient, reliable services to the province’s 24 publicly funded colleges and their libraries and learning resource centres. OCLS leverages the collective purchasing power of the colleges to achieve cost efficiencies for their libraries and works closely with college library representatives to support the delivery of library services for students, faculty, and staff. Below you can find a list of the current services we offer.

Services

ACE

Providing colleges with access to ACE, the Accessible Content E-Portal, a service that connects students with a growing repository of accessible format texts.

Acquisition Platform Contracts

Managing procurement agreements with key library service providers in the areas of print and eBook materials selection and acquisition (GOBI, ProQuest, Rialto contracts).

askON Virtual Reference

Coordinating a real-time virtual reference service via chat and text message. Participating college libraries contribute staff to askON’s collaborative schedule.

Borealis

Offering contract management and support for colleges that wish to obtain a Borealis research data repository.

CLEAR

Assisting college library users in determining permitted uses for electronic resources accessed through their library.

eResources Management

Negotiating, managing, and supporting the acquisition and licensing of electronic resources, and related platforms such as ConsortiaManager.

LEAP

Empowering college library staff to evaluate the accessibility of library eResources through a self-audit tool and access to a growing repository of accessibility assessment reports to inform acquisition decisions, support library users, and advocate for accessible eResources.

Learning Portal

Providing sustained financial support for maintenance and staffing for the Learning Portal platform to provide shared access to open learning resources, including the Maamwi hub, from all Ontario colleges.

LSP Support

Providing technical support for the shared library services platform (Alma/PrimoVE), managing vendor relations, and facilitating collaboration to maximize functionality, reliability, and efficiency of the shared platform.

Metadata Management

Supporting metadata consistency through centralized development and maintenance of high-quality shared cataloguing records and standards.

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A cooperative initiative between the province’s 24 college libraries to leverage a common Library Services Platform (LSP) in support of a shared vision for delivering collaborative and increasingly digital library services.

Professional Services

Offering consulting and custom services to assist college libraries with projects that are outside of OCLS’s usual scope of work.

Remote Access

Enabling authentication of off-campus users for secure access to the library’s online resources via centralized EZproxy management and technical support.

Research

Facilitating forward-thinking research projects on topics of interest to the college libraries. Includes administration of the CLO annual survey and data dashboard.

Resource Sharing

Providing students and faculty with quicker, more efficient access to a vast array of academic resources located in college libraries across Ontario.