Aside from education, universities have a responsibility to preserve local historical documents and open them up to the public wherever possible. It’s a sad day when a university needs to empty out a historical library to save its precious contents from rotting.
USC found itself in that position five weeks ago, when virtually all of the South Caroliniana Library’s contents were moved to outside storage for fear of damaging its many documents.
That's not the problem — for such an old building, renovations should be expected. The real problem comes with the university's lackadaisical timeline: the shell of the building will wait, its skeleton shelves unused, for a renovation that “won’t happen for a couple of years,” according to Henry Fulmer, the library’s director.
This is a real shame for the student body as well as the university. Students will still be able to request specific documents from the Caroliniana, but the requested items will be delivered to the library from an outside location, rather than found in the library.
We’re glad that these documents are still available to the public, but a library should be more than a delivery desk.
The Caroliniana has housed its collection for 175 years, making it an integral institution in the historic Horseshoe. Now, students who want to explore the historical wealth of the Caroliniana must pick and choose which specific documents seem interesting and wait to see if they are helpful the following day, and visitors looking to explore the library will find empty hallways.
We know that the Caroliniana isn’t the most popular destination on campus, which makes it very easy to become an afterthought to the university.
But we insist that its quick restoration is urgent for the same reason that restoring the Horseshoe wall was urgent: because it has a central place in the history of USC and because it offers real, tangible value when fully operational.
It would be easy to cast this obligation aside, but USC should work to renovate the Caroliniana as soon as possible.