Winthrop University’s library, completed in 1969, was named for the school’s first librarian, Ida Jane Dacus, who was also the first South Carolinian to receive professional training in library studies. Dacus Library is the primary provider on campus of scholarly information in all forms, from print to electronic. Our mission is to support the instructional and research activities of Dacus Library faculty and staff work together to provide superior research services, collections, and facilities to Winthrop’s diverse community. Our team is dedicated to helping students, faculty, staff, and other researchers identify, locate, assess, and use the information they need to become successful scholars. Dacus Library's goals include offering access to excellent services, engaging programs, inclusive collections, and welcoming facilities for Winthrop's diverse community.
Dacus Library houses more than 416,000 physical items, including textbooks, children’s books, journals, newspapers, and DVDs. Our electronic collections include 97 subscription databases, 193,000 ebooks, 52,000 downloadable videos, as well as 116,000 downloadable audio units.
Our membership with PASCAL (Partnership Among South Carolina Academic Libraries) and participation in Interlibrary Loan broadens the scope of research materials available to the Winthrop community. PASCAL provides access to 290,000 ebooks and millions of physical books. Interlibrary Loan provides access to physical items that are not available from SC libraries, as well as journal articles that are not available from our databases.