State Library Requests Staff, Increased Aid as It Reports Heavy Use and Digitization Gains

Lisa Aiken, director of the South Carolina State Library, told the Public Education and Special Schools Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee that the library is requesting 10 new positions and an increase in state aid to $3 per capita to expand digitization, services for people who are blind or print disabled and library development assistance.

Aiken said the state library continues to act as the official state documents depository and has expanded its digital holdings and public-facing services. "We are the South Carolina State Documents Depository," she said, adding that the agency is "mandated to receive 15 copies of printed documents from all state agencies." She described nightly web crawling that pulls potentially public state documents from agency websites so the library can validate and catalog them for long-term public access.

The request comes as the library reported heavy public use and recent digitization work. Aiken told the committee the digital depository now contains more than 54,000 items; staff added 306,039 state documents to their digital…