SC Legislature Might Unplug Statewide Online Library System

Unless the General Assembly drastically changes its tune toward higher-education funding, one of the state’s most cutting-edge — and crucial, officials say — online educational resources will be gutted to the point of irrelevancy once the state budget is passed.

The Partnership Among South Carolina Academic Libraries (PASCAL) was established in 2004 as an online resource for higher education students and faculty with an annual appropriation of $2 million. It was designed as a strategic initiative to improve information access for South Carolina’s college students and was launched by cooperation from public and private academic libraries