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Jim Lohmar Devin Grant Bates Hagood Ellie Klimecki Gillian Ellis Shep Rose

Forget the Pencils, Invest in BiblioBoard's Rad “School Supplies”

August 02, 2013
Word on the Street Shoppers beware: the annual consumer back-to-school free-for-all known as tax-free weekend is upon us. My rising 8th grader has her list all ready, but I’ll be making excuses for why we have to wait till next week to stock up on glue sticks. I become unglued at the thought of elbowing my way through the hordes at Target and the stampedes at Staples, with no help from salesclerks who don’t know graph paper from loose leaf. I’d rather pay an extra eight cents on the buck—a small price for sanity—especially since some of those tax dollars, theoretically anyway, go to support our ailing public schools.

But I do have an unbeatable deal for you bookbag stuffers—a bargain with an ROI much higher than any AAA-battery-powered algebra calculator could calculate (assuming you can find the aisle with the AAA batteries).

How ‘bout putting thousands and thousands of books, documents, and multimedia materials of rich historical content in your back-to-school checkout basket, and making them available to the students at schools in SC’s three poorest counties? The brilliant gang over at BiblioLabs is offering to do just that. BiblioLab’s Unlock SC crowdfunding campaign aims to provide students in Dillon, Clarendon, and Marlboro counties free access to BiblioBoard, the software company’s multimedia curation app for iPad and mobile devices that dusts off rare manuscripts, first-edition books, everything from classics to curiosities, and brings them to digital life. BiblioBoard is a marvel, an easy to navigate endless maze of intellectual stimulation, a tiny digital portal to a vast universe of ideas, information and inspiration culled from the world’s greatest libraries and collections. Believe me, it’s way cooler than a new zippered pencil case. Image from a Harmonia Case Resources BiblioBoard module

But hurry, just like tax-free weekend, the deal ends soon. The campaign to Unlock SC is over on August 31, so avoid the crowds this weekend, and opt for some powerful crowdfunding instead. Or maybe go brave the masses at Target, then donate your tax-free savings toward opening the minds and unlocking the potential for school kids who need a lot more than new #2s.

UnlockSC from BiblioBoard on Vimeo.