Education in South Carolina

We've had a display of student photography from the so-called "Corridor of Shame" schools here at the library. The "Corridor of Shame" refers to schools that run alongside Interstate 95 in coastal South Carolina. Predominantly populated with African-American students, these schools are some of the worst in the state and thus the country. Underfunded, ill-kept, located in high poverty and high unemployment areas, these schools are really despicable.

Students can't or won't learn in such an environment and tend to dislike formal education, often dropping out and joining the ranks of the unemployed in the area. A constant cycle of dysfunction and poverty, all because of insufficient funding and racism.

I've had a couple of research questions about integration in South Carolina lately, so I've been looking into that sad tale. Governors and legislators blocking racial integration at every turn, predominantly black schools having double the class size of its white crosstown neighbor, black teachers making half the salary of white teachers in white school districts, and so on and so forth.

Education, of all things, should not have barriers because of race. An educated populace, of any race, color or creed, can only improve our state.

What were officials like James Byrnes and Strom Thurmond afraid of?

Tough Decisions

Yesterday afternoon was spent making decisions on what print periodicals to keep in our collection. It pains us to cut anything, especially from our very small print periodical section, but with the economic realities of this upcoming budget year, it is a necessary evil.

Our periodicals just don't see a lot of use, unfortunately. We've tried talking them up in courses and in faculty meetings, but these methods have not reaped any significant benefit.

The good news is that most of the periodicals are covered in full-text databases, which students and faculty prefer to digging through bound periodicals and back issues for articles. Our database usage is way up, of course.

We're planning to keep a large amount of popular periodicals for browsing purposes, and we'll end up keeping some journals that are tied to our most popular majors and minors.

We've shifted the subscriptions for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal to the Kindle, and I hope to promote and market the e-reader more next fall.

(Thanks to University of Arkansas at Fort Smith Library for the picture)

Summer Projects at the Library

We had a splendid graduation on Saturday, with 180+ students earning diplomas. The weather cooperated for our outdoor ceremony, although it was hot with the black regalia!

I'll be starting my annual summer "catch up" projects soon. They will include:

• Statistics - we gather a multitude of statistics for a variety of professional and governmental agencies. I will be placing them in spreadsheets and deciphering what the individual surveys are actually looking for.
• LibGuides - we will be adding to our very slim collection of subject guides. We need to beef them up for a hard launch in the fall
• Revamping LIB101 - Alexa and I are retooling LIB101 from the ground up, and going without a textbook.
• Updating EzProxy - our proxy software is a couple of years old now, so it will need updating with the help of our crack IT staff. I probably won't do this until mid-July when Coker is not in session
• Prepping for my SCLA poster session - I am still working on a Kindle poster idea for this Fall's annual conference.

This is only the tip of the iceberg!

New blog, school ending, kids

I've started up a new blog that will cover the activities of the Coker Library - Information Technology Center. Check it out at cokerlibrary.blogspot.com. Mostly library news and information, it probably will only be of interest to Coker students, faculty and staff. But maybe random people might find it interesting.

The semester ends early next week for the day students and the end of next week for our evening school students. Graduation is May 2, at 9 am. Seems like I was just helping the freshmen move in to their dorms back in August. Wyatt wasn't even born yet! Amazing how quickly time passes...

Speaking of Wyatt, he is now nearly seven months old. He is cutting some teeth and is getting close to sitting up on his own. He is an extremely laid-back baby, so we often "forget" about him. Now before you call social services, we don't really forget about him. But he often will just chill in his bouncy seat while we are busy in other parts of the house. He rarely cries when he is hungry or needs a diaper change -- only first thing in the morning most of the time. He adores watching Owen and has a smile for everyone. Fortunately, his allergies are very mild compared to Owen at this stage. A little bit of cradle cap and eczema, but no where near the level that Owen had.

Owen turns three in two weeks. What an amazing little boy! So smart, funny and getting bigger each day. Fortunately, he has his mother's amazing memory. He remembered that that Lisa's dad gave him a specific shirt a year and half ago.

Gettin' Settled

I've finished my first month of work at Coker.

It's been pretty interesting, and it will get even more so once school reopens in a couple of weeks. I'm glad I had the opportunity to settle in while it was quiet on campus. I met another new professor lugging another load up to his third floor office this afternoon. He just moved into town, because teaching faculty are on a nine-month contract. I am a 12 month contract employee, meaning I work year round with vacation and sick days.

On my first day, I learned the director would be leaving after 13 months. About two hours later I learned another staff member was leaving to take another job closer to home. Finding competent staff is difficult here; job openings often only attract a handful of applicants. Losing two of eight staff members -- both full time, by the way -- is a difficult way to start a new job and career.

Fortunately, a new director has been hired and she will start Monday. She worked at the library before, so she is familiar with the culture here at the college. The other position will be filled with a part time staffer for now, with a full-time hire to come later. But with such a small labor pool, the job search will be interesting.

This week I've had the privilege of training all of the public services staff on the intricacies of using databases. It was a great experience for me for two reasons. First, it gave me an opportunity to learn the college's resources. Secondly, it gave me some much needed practice in bibliographic instruction. I will be doing a lot of BI here at Coker. Even if I did get the Electronic Resources librarian position, I will still be teaching quite frequently because there are so few librarians on the staff. I had a good time preparing for the week, but I'm not sure how my "class" enjoyed the sessions. A little boring at times, I could see a few of the staff members nodding off. Not much I could do about that. All of the feedback about the sessions was very positive. Nothing beats a confidence booster!