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Our Mission

The Lowcountry Digital Library (LCDL) produces digital collections and projects that support research about the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and historically interconnected sites in the Atlantic World.  LCDL is committed to a multifaceted approach that incorporates historical and anthropological scholarship, oral history, integrative archival practices, digital librarianship, and spatial, temporal, and environmental information. Together with its institutional partners, LCDL helps students, scholars, and a wide range of public audiences develop a better understanding of the history and culture of the South Carolina Lowcountry relative to the nation and the world.

Our Vision
  • We seek to advance public understanding of the history and culture of the South Carolina Lowcountry and the historically interconnected Atlantic World.
  • We use the latest techniques and technologies to improve digital access to the archival holdings of our partners.
  • We utilize the best practices to build partnerships between scholars and information technologists to improve our collective understanding of the region in a global context.
  • We foster relationships between the digital library and cultural heritage institutions. We provide digitization and metadata training and support to smaller, underfunded institutions that would, otherwise, be unable to engage in these activities.
  • We make all of our content, documentation and resources freely available on-line.
  • We support current research initiatives and cultivate creative content and digital information in appropriate formats across disciplines in support of scholarly inquiry.

The Lowcountry Digital Library serves not only an audience of scholars, but students, educators and other patrons from across the globe. LCDL is harvested and fully searchable within the South Carolina Digital Library and the Digital Public Library of America, which brings our partner institutions and their collections to the national and international stage. LCDL is also indexed by Google and all other major search engines. This increased visibility, coupled with LCDL’s complimentary digital preservation services, facilitates the sustainability, accessibility, and public engagement of our partners’ digital projects.

The Lowcountry Digital Library is a proud partner of: