South Carolina History

The mission of the Department of Archives and History is to preserve and promote the documentary and cultural heritage of the state through archival care and preservation, records management, public access, historic preservation, and education.

Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.

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.

The South Carolina Digital Library provides free access to historic materials, such as photographs, manuscripts, journals, books, oral histories, objects, etc. illustrating the history and culture of South Carolina from over 40 cultural heritage institutions across the state. Over 200,000 items have been added so far.

The Spartanburg County Public Libraries Digitization Program creates digital collections of local history materials from the Kennedy Room of Local and South Carolina History and Cleveland Genealogical Department and makes them available:
to enhance local history and genealogical research;
to increase access to its holdings;
to promote lifelong learning by the citizens of Spartanburg, South Carolina and the public at large.

South Carolina and the Civil War brings together eyewitness views and accounts of this period of American history, selected from the rich holdings of University of South Carolina Libraries. Books, diaries, sheet music, maps, letters, photographs and illustrations all provide glimpses of everyday life during exceptional times. This collection provides students and other researchers with primary sources on the Confederate and Union soldiers, women, African Americans, and others who lived in camps and on battlefields, in urban and rural areas, at the home front and on both sides of the blockade during our bloodiest conflict.