Groundbreaking for Special Collections wing is June 14

Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Rare Books and Special Collections wing will be held at 10 a.m. June 14. The event is free and open to the public.

Speakers will include President Andrew Sorensen, Dean Paul Willis, representatives from the library's donors and the Class of 1956, and Patrick Scott, director of Special Collections.

After years of planning, construction will begin shortly on the new home for Rare Books and Special Collections. A 40,000 square foot wing will be added to the west side of Thomas Cooper Library as part of a multi-stage plan to modernize and upgrade physical facilities for all USC libraries, and, when complete, will provide the collections with attractive space for exhibits, teaching, public programs, and digital projects, as well as expanded and up-to-date study space for researchers. Both wings will feature environmentally friendly "green" elements, spurred by a planning grant from the Kresge Foundation. The wing will consist of four floors and contain public spaces such as orientation and exhibition galleries, a multi-use meeting room and visual materials display gallery, a reading room and a reference area, and teaching rooms with "smart classroom" technology. In addition, up-to-date stack areas will provide space for expansion, as well as enhanced environmental conditions, fire prevention, and security to ensure the long-term availability of these extraordinary collections.

Construction is being funded with a combination of private gifts, federal monies secured by former Senator Ernest F. Hollings, grants, and donations to the George Terry Memorial Fund.

The University of South Carolina (then South Carolina College) started building its library collections in 1803. By 1850, with 25,000 volumes, it had the largest library collection south of Washington, DC, housed in the first purpose-built free-standing college library building. Many of the valuable books acquired during that time period are still in the library's care and form the core of the current Special Collections. Since the mid-20th century, the libraries as a whole have grown exponentially. Now, with over 3.3 million volumes, USC's libraries constitute a major research and teaching resource for the University, the community, the state, and the nation. USC has the only nationally ranked research library in the state and the only South Carolina membership in the Association of Research Libraries.

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Thomas Cooper Library has also grown dramatically in recent years. Its special mission is to acquire, preserve, and make available distinctive (often rare or valuable, sometimes unique) materials and collections, such as books, manuscripts, and other materials, in support of teaching and research. Over the past twenty years the department's holdings have grown six-fold, attracting international scholarly attention and adding significant new collections, largely through generous response to an expanded gift program, in the areas of philosophy (Hume, Russell); history (Garibaldi), exploration (Renaissance maps), military history (Civil War, World War I), and military aviation (World War II); natural history (18th-century watercolors, Abbot) and the history of science (Darwin, Babbage); English literature (Milton), Scottish literature (Burns, Carlyle, Stevenson), and American literature (Emerson, Fuller, Whitman, Johnson, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Heller, Dickey); children's literature (Rawlings, African-American); and the history of the book.

Over the same period, the department has also added new initiatives in the areas of teaching, exhibits, digitization, and scholarly and public programs. Its community organization, the Thomas Cooper Society, founded in 1990, now has over 600 members. An extensive series of Web exhibits and Web projects based on the collections has been attracting over 25 million hits a year.

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