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Generation after generation, the Cleveland Public Library has been one of best places to view the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.  We welcome you to come in and get warm, watch from our windows, and take a good look around at our books and displays while you’re here.

Image: 1960 St. Patrick's Day Parade, Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection.

Over 170,000 book titles were published in the United States during 2007, with Fiction, Juvenile, Sociology, and Economics books comprising over a third of that total.* If you are looking to enter the publishing arena, the Literature Department has many resources to help you achieve your writing goals.

Whether you see yourself as a novelist, screenwriter, poet, journalist, or playwright, the Literature Department has materials that can help you locate an agent or publisher, hone your craft, or stir your creative juices.  Click here to see some highlights of the collection.

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March 31, 2009 marks the 200^th anniversary of Edward FitzGerald's birth, and the 150^th anniversary of the publication of his translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam into English verse. The Rubaiyat is a collection of poems written in verses of four lines, quatrains. The word rubaiyat is derived from the Arabic root verb raba`a, meaning  "to quadruple."

To commemorate these events, the Special Collections Department has on display some of the illustrated editions of this famous book of poetry, written in the 12^th century by the Persian mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher, Omar Khayyam.  In 1859, Edward FitzGerald, a Victorian man of letters, a dilettante, and an amateur translator, rendered 75 of these verses into English, and published them privately.

The Cleveland Public Library owns more than 1100 editions of the Rubaiyat thanks to John G. White, a former Library Board President and major benefactor of the Library.  While tracing the literature that discussed the origin and history of chess, he became interested in examining chess references in classical and medieval works. He collected the Rubaiyat because of the chess connection.

         ‘Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days

         While Distiny with Men for Pieces plays :

              Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,

          And one by one back in the Closet lays.

To view other commemorative exhibits and events, click here. 

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On February 17, 1869 - Mayor Stephen S. Buhrer announced the opening of the Cleveland Public Library.  The Library was housed on the third floor in a building located on West Superior Avenue.  Present at the dedication was Mayor Stephen S. Buhrer, Board of Education President E.R. Perkins, and Rev. Anson Smyth who stated that "the library would grow and prosper for a thousand years under the fostering care of the board."

The original collection had approximately 5,800 books (2,200 were inherited from the old school district library). The additional volumes were purchased from the proceeds of the new tax authorized by the state in 1867.  Today, it is a complex consisting of two main library buildings and 28 branches. 

Read more about the history of Cleveland Public Library.

Click image for large view Martin Luther King, Jr. Cleveland Press, May 16, 1967 Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection

February 12, 2009, marks the 100^th anniversary of the founding of the NAACP and the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. Cleveland Public Library commemorates these historic anniversaries with the publication of In Their Own Words: The Documents of African American History: A Guide to Microform Collections at Cleveland Public Library. (Click here to view the guide.)

Cleveland Public Library has one of the largest collections of resources on African American culture and history in any public library in the United States. In addition to owning nearly every English-language book and periodical title included in The Harvard Guide to African American History, which includes 15,000 titles and covers every area of endeavor, the Library's collection includes more than 5 million pages of primary source African American history documents on microfilm. 

The Papers of the NAACP, 1909-1970, is among the most prominent of these collections. Consisting of more than one million documents, this collection can be used to conduct in-depth research on the evolution of civil rights for African Americans over the course of the 20th century, a path that has led to the White House in this historic anniversary year. [See pages 9 and 10 of the guide (parts 12, 26 & 27) for the location of records pertaining to the Cleveland office.]

Other collections include letters of luminaries such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Mary McLeod Bethune; the historical records of organizations such as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); and unique collections such as The Records of the Southern Plantations.

Click here to read more.

2009 marks the eighth year of Cleveland Public Library's celebration of Lunar New Year.  Lunar New Year is a fifteen day holiday celebrated by ethnic Chinese around the world.  The celebration is the preeminent traditional Chinese holiday where businesses are closed for a two week period and migrants return home to be with their families and extended relations.  Homes are given a thorough cleaning to rid spaces of any lingering bad luck.  Residences are also dressed in red to prepare for good fortune in the coming months.  Gifts, elaborate meals and new clothes mark a fresh start for the New Year.  Families gather to prepare dumplings, New Year cakes and other special foods to mark the occasion and begin the midnight countdown, which is welcomed with fireworks and public revelry. 

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Recently staff members from the Cleveland Public Library toured the Cleveland Police Museum to learn how the two organizations could work together to best assist visitors of our respective institutions.  Police Museum curator Allan J. Coates told the group, "The Police Museum is not only a history of the Police Department but of Cleveland itself."

The museum displays artifacts and photos from significant events in Cleveland history, including the emergence of the Cleveland Mafia, Elliot Ness's career as Cleveland Public Safety Director, and the Torso Murders (which Ness was unable to solve).

Click here to read more.

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Do you love the Eastman Reading Garden in the summer or, do you look forward to the People's University on Wheels coming to visit? How about the great people helping you at your neighborhood branch library or the wealth of unique resources like The Official Airline Guide? To welcome our new director, Felton Thomas, we invite you to share some stories about your favorite things at the Cleveland Public Library. To add your voice to our welcome, click the add new comment link at the bottom of this story. We will post some of your favorite things about the Cleveland Public Library right here.

To inspire you, click read more to see a few recordings of the famous Rodgers and Hammerstein tune "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music: