Financial Literacy Blog

Financial literacy is defined as “the ability to use knowledge and skills to manage one’s financial resources effectively for lifetime financial security”. (Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Finance Literacy. National Standards in K-12 Personal Finance Education.) 

These days, making thoughtful and informed decisions about one’s finances is more important and complicated than ever. Several trends are converging to demonstrate how important financial literacy really is, be it the rapid change of financial environment, rising and falling interest rates, myriad of financial options, longer life expectancy, higher costs of education, etc.

This LibGuide, http://library.tctc.edu/financial, is a compilation of resources to help one understand the broad financial issues from the very basic of personal finance of saving and budgeting to how to manage credit and debt. It also includes a section on finances for college students; how to save and plan for college, money management for college students, how to pay for college, how to manage debt and student loans.

By, Kultida Dunagin

Celebrating the Library staff

As a supervisor I would just like to say that I’m very lucky that I work with such a great group of folks.  They come to work, they do their jobs, and they help the students find the resources needed for projects.  But the main reason, that I’m lucky, is that the folks that work in the library LOVE helping the students.    In case you haven’t been by the library lately, let me tell you about us.

Claudia is the front line supervisor for circulation.  She has been here over 25 years.  She has seen it all!  And she has moved the library from Miller Hall to Ruby Hicks using shopping carts.  She knows more about the history of the library than anyone else.  She is the one in charge of the student workers.  Claudia loves the Clemson Tigers and goes to EVERY football game.

Michele is the Easley community campus dedicated librarian.  She also organizes our PR campaign, answers reference questions, and teaches information literacy classes.  She is the point person for interlibrary loan including PASCAL.  Michele moved from Ohio to start working here.  She loves that we don’t get that same amount of snow they do up there. 

Alydia orders the books and catalogs them.  What does that mean you wonder?  That means after she gets the books in, she is the one that loads the information into the on-line database so everyone can find where that book lives in the library.  Oh, and she decides where that book lives by determining the call number (yes, that is all those letters and numbers on the spine of the book.)  Alydia started here as a work study student many years ago.  She finished her AA, then her BA, and now has a Masters in Adult Higher Education (I’m trying to get her to go to library school next!).  TCTC is in her blood – her son is attending here now.

Jessica was formerly at the Easley campus and is now the night circulation supervisor here.  She is the “serials” person. What that means is that she is the one that orders and sorts all those journals and magazines we get.  She also works on how that information looks in electronic form.  Jessica has her Masters in Library Science from USC and has worked for TCTC for 3 years now.   She is the quietest one of all of us. 

Sue is in charge of Instruction of the library resources.  And boy howdy (as my grandmother would say) does she do some instruction!  She organizes the calendar of who is teaching the workshops and where.  This can get very involved since the library teaches over 250 workshops a semester in 4 or 5 locations with 6 people teaching.  On top of that, she creates the videos of the information, makes sure it is transcribed so that we follow ADA, and develops the workshop outlines.  Oh, and she answers reference questions.  Sue is a wonderful cook and usually spends the day on Sunday cooking so that she just has to warm dinner up after her 7 mile walk every day. 

Kultida has been here 1 year as of last week.  Happy work anniversary!  She has a Phd in Film and is originally from Thailand.  If you have a country project for Thailand, you should interview her.  The skill she has that just amazes me is translating fiction novels from English into Thai.  Kultida is the Anderson community campus dedicated librarian.  She is in charge of electronic resources and the overall look of the webpage.

Debby is at the Anderson campus.  She has decades of library experience from working at a community college in Ohio before she “retired” and moved here.  Debby recently got a new cat, Calypso.  Ask her to see the video!  Besides being the Anderson point person, she has other projects including helping Norman upload the electronic versions of the literature notebook.

Allison is the newest library team member.  She is stationed at the Easley campus.  Allison has library experience in a variety of places like West Virginia and Greenwood.  She has her Master’s in Library also.  Allison is a 2^nd generation TCTC employee (her mom Judy is still an adjunct here and her dad David retired a few years ago).  Oh, and she has a new car that she is very proud of.

You might still see Norman around here.  Yes, he retired a year ago. But he still comes in a few hours a week to work on the Megasearch discovery tool the library has so that all of you can find your articles and books.  He has a new dog that he is training.  Jasper is a real character that keeps Norman hopping.

And me, I’m Marla.  Like I said earlier, I’m very lucky to work with such a great group of people.

Weeding the Old and Planting the New

The Tri-County Technical College Pendleton Campus Library has gone through a “weeding” process in which books that are out of date are discarded from our catalog and placed on a ‘free’ book cart in the library lobby. Similar to pulling weeds from a flower bed, it is an essential part of our mission to provide our students, faculty and staff with the best resources available. As a result, we have also added many new books to the collection within the past week. A few of the titles added to our collection are as follows: The Divergent series, reference titles on Mythology, Michelangelo, and Military vehicles. Feel free to stop by the library to check out one of our new titles or to take advantage of the free discarded titles. Additionally, we are always willing to accept book requests for purchase.  Your input is valued!

By, Alydia Sims

Library Book Displays

All three campus libraries change book displays at least once a month.  We like you to see the variety of print information that we have available for you to check out and read.  Jessica Scott creates a brochure every month to highlight some of our collection. This month Jessica focuses on Earth Day. If you would like a copy of the actual brochure, stop by the library and ask for one.  Also remember that April is Poetry month.