The mission of the University Libraries is to provide students, faculty and staff with comprehensive access to information essential to the teaching, research, and outreach activities of the University of South Carolina. The libraries collect, organize, conserve and manage print and digital resources in order to provide library and information services to the University community.

Services

• Negotiates with vendors for electronic databases available to all USC System Campuses, and Columbia bears the cost for many databases available to all campuses. Negotiates price and licensing for 50 electronic databases available to all campuses and pays the full cost for 30 databases that all patrons can use free of charge
• The Digital Collections unit provides centralized expertise, management, support and training for the digitization projects created by all USC System Campus libraries
• Provides all cataloging services for the Palmetto Campuses and USC Beaufort and supplies complex material operations for USC Aiken and USC Upstate, including database maintenance. Employs two full-time positions devoted exclusively to providing cataloging services and coordinating communication for the USC System Campus libraries
• Hosts the shared systems: Millennium ILS, Scholar Commons, and CONTENTdm
• Subcontracts Encore Duet to campuses at a markedly reduced rate
• Manages requests for materials within the USC System through the PASCAL Delivers service as well as Interlibrary Loan (ILL) requests for materials held outside the USC System
• Processes lending requests for all USC System campuses and borrowing requests for all campuses except USC Aiken and USC Upstate
• Provides implementation and support of the technology behind USC campus library operations. These include: the Millennium integrated library system (acquisition, catalog, and circulation system), the Encore Duet discovery platform, the Scholar Commons institutional repository, the EZproxy servers for remote access to electronic library resources (Palmetto campuses only) and the Asset Tracking system used both by all campuses for shipping and receiving.
• Manages specialized (ILL) software, develops web pages for each campus and provides training for librarians at each campus location.
• Ships packages from the USC Printing office and other USC System mail to each of the USC System campuses daily. Shipped and received 1,446 packages between August 2015 between April 2016. Since January 2016, 287 packages were cataloged library materials, 185 were from the USC Printing office and 405 were general USC System mail.