During the Reagan administration, four institutions were created with the primary purpose of promoting democracy abroad, one institution addresses labor issues, another addresses business, and the remaining two are represented by the Democratic party and the Republican party.

Mears & Murdock Baseball Collections

The foundation of the baseball collection at the Cleveland Public Library is comprised of two outstanding, formerly private collections. In 1944 the Library acquired the baseball collection of Cleveland advertising executive Charles W. Mears (1874-1942). Mears was a young contributing writer to the St. Louis Sporting News when he began a lifelong enthusiasm for baseball information and statistics. He amassed one of the largest baseball libraries in the country, and is recognized as one of the first baseball statisticians.? The Mears Collection contains the daily box scores for a period of approximately 40 years, as well as books on all phases of baseball.? Included are long runs of annuals and periodicals (some dating from 1858), league constitutions, and baseball fiction. For more information about Charles W. Mears please visit this article written by one of our staff members.

With the month of Ramadan coming to a close Cleveland Public Library would like to remind patrons of the Islamic texts housed within Special Collections’ John G. White “Orientalia” collection. CPL Special Collections maintains a well-rounded collection of Quranic commentary, Hadith, works on Islamic jurisprudence, and Sufi literature.

The Quran pictured here is approximately 200-300 years old and written in the Arabic Naskh script. The first and last pages of this manuscript are fully illuminated and all pages have double ornamental boarders in gold and blue. The dimensions of this Quran are 16 x 10 cm.

September 15 to October 15 is Hispanic Heritage Month and we would like to call your attention to Páginas, Cleveland Public Library’s Spanish language website. This website provides access to the CLEVNET Catalog in Spanish, a collection of links to the best local and national Latino websites, lists of Spanish-language books recently received, and events of interest to the Latino community, plus the Library’s policies in Spanish. There is a link to Páginas in the Services section of the Cleveland Public Library home page. http://paginas.cpl.org.

It is not uncommon for large metropolitan areas to have multiple newspapers that target specific demographic groups. Many of these papers have excelled by generating focused content that caters to a specific community of people.

For Cleveland residents the Call & Post newspaper has generated a world-class journalistic product for much of its 80+ year history. With a fresh and unique perspective, the Call & Post has reported on our city’s political, economic and social life, often drawing attention to stories unreported elsewhere.

Union Branch's 4H Club won a yellow merit ribbon at the Cuyahoga County Fair. In addition to the whimsical sock puppets pictured here, the 4H members won for their garden vegetables and decorative, hand-made pillows. The Branch's 4H chapter, which usually numbers about 20 young people, has been meeting for nine years and has won many ribbons.

The Cleveland Public Library has been selected to receive the 2007 Award for Outstanding Commitment to the Preservation and Care of Collections. This annual award is presented jointly by the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) and Heritage Preservation.

The Cleveland Public Library is the first public library to receive this prestigious national award since its inception in 1999. Previous recipients have included art museums, historic sites, research libraries, and archives.

You may have noticed that along with a new look to the library's website, new functionality has also been introduced. At the end of each blog post and on many individual pages within the website you will see small icons toward the bottom of the page. One of these, shown here on the right, refers to a site called del.icio.us. You may read more about del.icio.us here. Many of the library's subject departments have created accounts that house links to their specific areas of expertise. Explore some sites you may not have ever visited by going to a subject department page and choosing the "Recommended Bookmarks" link or see them all in one place here.