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Cuyahoga County legal resources
Do you need help understanding a law or finding a legal form? Visit the Social Sciences Department, 5th floor of the Louis Stokes Wing to pick up a guide to legal services and law libraries in Cuyahoga County or click here to print your own copy. Databases and web references are also available.
The cost of transportation
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In 1917, the Federal Trade Commission hosted a conference addressing how the high cost of food and fuel was affecting our nation’s citizenry. In fact, all throughout our history governments and policy institutes have sought out ways to combat rising energy costs and its impact on personal transportation.* On a macro level governments have had limited success in guiding energy costs. Fortunately, the choices we make as individuals can have an immediate effect on our pocketbooks.
With the current price of energy in mind we are forced to take a closer look at which form of transportation we choose for our daily travels. To make an informed decision regarding personal transportation we owe it to ourselves to consider three factors: cost, time, and convenience. The Cleveland Public Library has at its disposal a variety of resources that may make your decision easier, or at the very least easier to defend when arguing over household expenses with your loved ones.
Travelers exhibit
The John G. White and Special Collections Department is currently displaying items on travelers, travel, exploration, and adventure, which includes items on gypsies or Romani, referred to as Travelers in some cultures. These nomadic wanderers carried their history and culture in carriage and caravan. Also on display are photograph albums of trips to the Western United States by John G. White and several fellow adventurers who are clearly caught up in the natural beauty of the vast resources of the American West. Featured are various images and narratives by men and women who followed a calling and set out to see new sights and experience cultures previously unknown to the West, as well as a collection of souvenir booklets from various locations in the United States and abroad. 
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees. - Marcel Proust
According to the Conference Board
You may have noticed that many recent articles about the economy include sentences that begin or end with "according to the Conference Board." If you type that phrase into Google, you'll have 24 million hits. So, what is the Conference Board?
It is a global, independent research organization working for the public interest. It produces research, makes forecasts, assesses trends, convenes conferences, and publishes information and analysis. It regularly publishes Leading Economic Indicators, Consumer Confidence Indicators, and reports on corporate governance, business ethics, executive compensation, human resource issues, worklife balance issues, and other trends affecting business and labor.
Reference questions
Often we receive reference questions that begin with “What is the value of …” The answer can be easily determined when it concerns a commonly traded commodity, financial instrument, or product. These types of questions become much more problematic when we are asked to estimate the worth of artifacts that have never been sold on the open market. In these instances we are forced to come up with creative solutions to the unanswerable.
Today we were asked, “What is the value (in US dollars) of the Liberty Bell?” Clearly, the Liberty Bell is a priceless piece of American history that is virtually impossible to value monetarily. In an attempt to leave no reference question unanswered we chose to value the Liberty Bell using current scrap and precious metal prices. The prices we used were those quoted in the daily publication American Metal Market (AMM, volume 116, number 20-4). Here are the figures we came up with:
Grants and grant searching
Seeking out available money for grants can be difficult for the uninitiated. Cleveland Public Library resources can greatly assist patrons in finding the grants that they are looking for. Please click here for a guide on various directories, proposal and grant writing, as well as starting and managing a nonprofit organization. If you are looking for a very specific grant (i.e. something in the arts, social work or education), then you will need to include specialized directories in your search. The guide listed above is meant to be a general introduction to grant resources; if you do not see what you looking for, please free to ask a staff member for more assistance.
The War Over “Orphan Works”
The purpose of United States Copyright laws is to promote creativity and innovation for the advancement of society. To encourage innovators to bring their creations into the public realm, the Constitution and various patent and copyright laws enacted by the U.S. government provide creators with a period of exclusive ownership of what they have created. After this period has expired, the works enter the public domain for others to use freely or to incorporate into new works. If a person or organization would like to use a creator’s work before it enters the public domain, they must contact the author to inquire about what type of compensation the author would like for the use of their creation. When a work is used without an author’s permission, particularly for commercial purposes, this creates an instance of copyright infringement and opens up the infringer to litigation and penalties. This fear of litigation has given rise to a debate regarding “Orphan Works” or works for which authors can not easily be located.
Esperanto and Klingon and Quenya...Oh, my!!
Running May through August 2008, Cleveland Public Library will present an exhibit entitled "Esperanto, Elvish, and Beyond: The World of Constructed Languages" on the second floor of the Main Library.
What are "constructed languages?" Quite simply, they are languages that have been intentionally constructed. Languages like English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Swahili, and Guguyimidjir (a nearly-extinct native language of Australia) all evolved naturally, arising organically within a group of people through various natural forces. No single person defined their vocabularies, designed their syntaxes, or deliberately decided to create them.
