Monday, Sep. 22, 2008

Rare books director collects library award

Patrick Scott has a passion for books and libraries.

For the past 10 years, the University of South Carolina English professor and director of Rare Books Collections has played a key role in doubling the university’s collection to more than 100,000 volumes.

That passion was recognized recently when the Friends of the Richland County Public Library presented Scott with the Lucy Hampton Bostick Award.

Under Scott’s tenure, the USC library has acquired many world-class collections, including ones on F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Milton.

In addition to helping grow the inventory, Scott was instrumental in getting many of the library materials digitized and shared worldwide. Last year, he helped launch the digitized Phillis Wheatley project, which contains “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral,” the first book published by an African-American author.

“I have worked in university research libraries for nearly 40 years and have met many rare-books librarians. I have never met Patrick’s equal,” Paul Willis, former dean of libraries at USC, said in a letter supporting Scott’s nomination for the award.

Willis said Scott brings “great genuine interest and intellect to books and libraries and is eager to share his knowledge and the extraordinary collections with faculty, students and the greater community.”

Scott is the director of rare books and special collections at USC’s Thomas Cooper Library. In 1985, he was named the USC English Department Teacher of the Year, and in 2004 he received the universitywide Mungo Teaching Award.

Scott earned his bachelor of arts at Merton College, Oxford; his master of arts at Leicester University and his doctorate at the University of Edinburgh. Before coming to South Carolina in 1976, he taught at the secondary level in Nigeria and Britain, at the college level at Leicester and Edinburgh, and was a visiting lecturer at the College of William and Mary.

The Friends’ Lucy Hampton Bostick Award was established in 1978 to honor the memory of Bostick, the Richland County Public Library’s director from 1928-1968.

The Friends of RCPL is a nonprofit organization charged with raising support for and awareness of the library. For more information, call (803) 929-3475

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Here’s a chance to tap your feet and help a good cause in one sitting.

Statewide dance and theater performance companies will present Amazing Feets VI, Oct. 11 and Oct. 12 at the Richland 2 auditorium, 7500 Brookfield Road on the Richland Northeast High campus.

The annual event is a fundraiser for juvenile diabetes research.

The performances begin at 8 each evening.

Tickets are $8 and can be purchased at the door or in advance by calling Anne Richardson, head of dance for the Palmetto Center for the Arts, at (803) 699-2800, ext. 2832, during school hours.

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