A cooperative research library and depository, located in Chicago, which holds specialized and rare materials that complement and supplement the collections of its member libraries. These materials include books, journals, newspapers, archives, and microform sets.

Ohio University, as a part of OhioLINK, participates in a group membership in CRL. University faculty, students, and staff may borrow materials from CRL because of this membership.

Cataloged CRL books are found in the OhioLINK Central Catalog, with the location code Ctr Research Lib. These materials may be requested through the standard OhioLINK online borrowing procedures, but may take an extra day or two to arrive.

CRL also has its own online catalog which is available for searching.

Many additional items are not in the catalog, including state documents of all U.S. states, college catalogs, textbooks, foreign newspapers, and foreign dissertations. The CRL Collection Databases provide means of searching for some of these materials. Loans of such non-cataloged items are arranged through Ohio University's Interlibrary Loan / Document Delivery service.