What's New at SC State Library

As I mentioned in my previous post, there's been lots of new projects and events at the State Library this Summer. We will be doing a What's New session at SCLA in October to provide more detailed updates on these projects so I hope that you'll plan to attend if you're at the conference. As a quick Summary, here are the highlights:

• The project to find and catalog born digital state documents has continued and we now have over 500 items (almost 400 titles) cataloged and linked in our online catalog.
• We started a new digitization project and have scanned approximately 30 documents from our CPM (Certified Public Manager) collection. These are items requested often by state government employees and we hope they'll get a lot more use by making them available electronically. We are using this as a pilot to help us develop best practices for the future.
• In July, our Director signed a contract with SirsiDynix Corporation to offer a statewide content portal to the K-12 community. The product is called SchoolRooms and it will be live at the State Library sometime in September. Following our go live and training, we'll be putting this out in public libraries and schools around the state.
• The State Library Leadership Team has been going through extensive strategic planning thanks to some wonderful assistance from USC's Office of Public Policy & Practice. In doing so, we've identified several areas of change for the State Library. I'm very excited about the potential changes that I feel will improve the State Library in the way we serve our patrons and other SC libraries. So, stay tuned for more info about that!

There are many other exciting things occurring within our various departments but I wanted to share with you briefly the things I've been involved in this Summer. I will share more about these individual initiatives as we move forward. As always, if you have questions, please let me know. Have a great day everyone!

iAm Laptop Project

Hey guys, I know I've been way out of the loop this Summer. We've been so busy with lots of great projects here at the State Library. I will update you on those shortly but I first wanted to share a posting from the LibraryTrax blog that I thought you'd be interested in. It was posted by Felicia Vereen on August 22nd to announce the schools chosen for the laptop project.

Senator James H. “Jim” Ritchie, Jr., Majority Whip, announced the six iAm Laptop Pilot Program grant recipient schools on August 13. $5 million in funding will go to six public schools to provide laptops to all ninth grade students. If this pilot is successful, it is anticipated to be expanded to all SC schools, providing laptops to all SC ninth grade students.

The schools chosen for the pilot are:

• Midland Valley, Aiken School District
• Scott’s Branch, Clarendon School District 1
• CA Johnson, Richland School District 1
• Lakewood High, Sumter School District 2
• Bethune-Bowman, Orangeburg School District 5
• Creek Bridge, Marion School District 7

Two alternate schools were also named:

• Broome High, Spartanburg School District 3
• Marion High, Marion School District 1

Senator Ritchie said, “The iAm Laptop Pilot Program provides a unique opportunity to couple cutting edge technology with modern teaching techniques to greatly enhance the competitiveness of all South Carolina students, especially those currently stuck in underperforming schools. No longer will our students be limited to traditional school hours and teaching methods. Instead, this program will provide our young people with the educational resources necessary to say ‘I am in charge of my future. I am the future of South Carolina.’ This program places South Carolina in the forefront of innovation and is an important strategy to improve equity and opportunity among all of our high school students.”

The program begins Fall 2007.