Lander students may lose their privileges provided by PASCAL if things do not change soon. PASCAL stands for Partnership Among South Carolina Academic Libraries, and provides valuable resources for students statewide. Two of the major programs PASCAL offers are PASCAL Delivers, and Electronic Resources which are in the form of databases available to students through Lander's website. There are 23 databases provided, and many are integral to majors here at Lander. PASCAL Delivers provides rapid delivery of books that are not available in the library. This allows students to receive a book from any college in South Carolina in approximately three days. This service is free to students, and the books may be held on to for up to six weeks.
According to PASCAL's website, state funding was reduced by 90% from $2 million to $200,000 in fiscal year 2008-09. PASCAL has had to cancel licenses for electronic resources and now can only make book deliveries three days each week. The loss of databases hurts the students ability of researching information, and puts the school responsible to purchase the licenses to these programs. As an example, Lander had to buy the license to Lexis Nexis for this school year. If efforts are not successful in reversing PASCAL funding cuts, PASCAL may not be available in the very near future.
PASCAL's future may be in the hands of the students and faculty of the schools in which it provides services to. Ann Hare's goal is to spread awareness through the means of signed petitions and written testimonials. As the Dean of the Library, she has had much first hand experience with PASCAL.
Hare stated, "PASCAL is extremely important to all students and faculty at Lander, and we need to get behind the effort to persuade the South Carolina General Assembly to restore funding." One petition has already been sent out to Lander students, and another is planned to be sent on November 10th. Other South Carolina schools, such as Clemson University have also started efforts in preserving PASCAL's future. Students and faculty can also visit PASCAL's website at http://pascalsc.org for more information on how they can help.
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