In December of 2013, the London Public Library Board of Trustees voted to join the Central Library Consortium.  The consortium is a partnership between 14 public library systems in Central Ohio, with London, Bexley and Upper Arlington expecting to make their debut in the CLC catalog April 9th.

Currently, London patrons have access to roughly 45,000 items at the library, as members of the consortium, they will have access to over 4 million items, which includes materials from Columbus Metro Libraries, Fairfield County District Library, Grandview Heights, Marysville, Plain City, Worthington, Pickaway County, Pickerington, Wagnalls Memorial Library, Southwest, Alexandria Public Library, Upper Arlington and Bexley Library.

“Our library catalog will be married with all of the other consortium libraries so when a patron does a search for an item, it searches all of the catalogs.  If we do not have a physical copy of something then the library that does will send a copy to us, which will arrive within two or three days,” says Bryan Howard, the library’s services manager who is overseeing the migration to the consortium.

The consortium will be delivering materials to the library five days a week, so that patrons at London and others in the system get their materials in a timely manner.

“Collaboration and material sharing has become the model of today’s libraries and we realized that we couldn’t physically grow our collections in house, but we are doing the next best thing,” says Howard.

Other notable benefits to joining the consortium will be automated phone calls to patrons who have holds on materials, as well as cost saving opportunities for the library when purchasing databases and computer hardware.   The library’s system will be down from April 4 to April 8th as it is integrated into the consortium catalog.  The go-live date for the updated CLC catalog is expected to be Wednesday, April 9th.

Meanwhile, the library will be closed from March 26 to April 13 as it goes under a major renovation of its main floor.

“There’s a lot of work ahead but when it’s all said and done, the community will have an updated library interior and access to a very large collection of materials.  It is very exciting and we look forward to April 14th – we hope the community will too!” says Mike Hensel, library director.

The library is located at 20 E. First Street in London, Ohio and online at www.mylondonlibrary.org.