The Marion County Library Board of Trustees has named William T. DeWitt III as the new director for Marion County Library. He succeeds library director Phillip Alan Smith who now serves as Director of the Florence County Library System.

Dr. Curtis R. Rogers, Communications Director of the South Carolina State Library, recently received the 2014 Founders Award at the 4th Annual Library Communications Conference held in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey.

Today, the Collaborative Summer Library Program (CSLP) launches the 2015 Teen Video Challenge, a national video competition for teens to get involved with reading and their public library's summer reading program. CSLP is a consortium consisting of public libraries and state library agencies throughout the United States, its territories, and the Cayman Islands. The members of this consortium work together to provide high-quality summer reading materials for public libraries to use in their summer programs with children, teens, and adults.

Join us for a free book signing and author talk.  Jack Shuler, The Thirteenth Turn: A History of the Noose. A courageous and searching book that reminds us where we come from, and what is lost if we forget. Published by PublicAffairs, member of the Perseus Books Group. See the book review from the Washington Post.

Do you want to learn more about the South Carolina State Library? We’re now offering free 30 minute LIVE webinars!

Register today!

Monday, October 27, 2:00 p.m.  
Tuesday, November 18, 10:00 a.m. 
Wednesday, December 10, 3:30 p.m.

The South Carolina State Library is pleased to announce a workshop on getting the most out of the US Census Bureau’s American FactFinder website.

American FactFinder provides access to data from several censuses and surveys conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The American Community Survey (ACS) is an ongoing survey that generates estimates on social, economic, housing, and demographic topics. Data users can access these estimates down to our smallest level of geography, block groups, using the ACS Summary File.

Young readers in grades 4-12 are invited to write a personal letter to an author for the Letters about Literature (LAL) contest, a national reading and writing promotion program. The letter can be to any author (living or dead) from any genre (fiction or nonfiction, contemporary or classic) explaining how that author’s work changed the student’s view of the world.

The South Carolina State Library is pleased to again offer two popular grants research and proposal writing classes:

Grants Research: Finding a Funder for Your Nonprofit Organization - This class helps individuals working with nonprofit organizations locate information on grants available from private foundations and corporations using the South Carolina State Library’s electronic and print resources. Sessions run from 9:30 a.m. to noon and are offered on two different dates:

The South Carolina State Library is pleased to announce the launch of its newly redesigned website statelibrary.sc.gov. The new site has an easy-to-navigate menu bar and provides keyword searching of its website pages.

The SC Academy of Authors (SCAA) announces its annual fellowship competitions in poetry and fiction. Winning authors in each category will receive $1,000 and be invited to the SCAA induction ceremony in Charleston in April 2015. The winning entries will be published in “Fall Lines,” an annual literary journal published by Muddy Ford Press in Columbia.