Did you know the History and Geography Department has an extensive collection of travel guides and pamphlets? Did you know the History and Geography Department has an extensive collection of travel guides and pamphlets?
Travel Encounters! The new webpage of the History and Geography Department is dedicated to providing travel tips, trips and tales to all those who seek adventure. The new webpage includes useful information for the most experienced business traveler, for a family planning a vacation, and for a student studying abroad: Suggested destinations, helpful travel resources, timely news for the traveler and event information from across the globe is presented.
See featured selections from the Library’s extensive and up-to-date collection of maps, pamphlets, and travel guides from all of the major publishers, and from some of the lesser-known publishers. Travel series included are: Lonely Planet, Michelin, Insiders’ Guide, Moon Handbooks, Access Guides, Rick Steves’, Rough Guides, Off the Beaten Path, Eyewitness Travel, Insight Guides, and more. Before you travel visit Travel Encounters!
To celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month, the Fine Arts & Special Collections blog will feature information about jazz artists and its music. Visit the Fine Arts Department for jazz book collections and music CDs.
The Smithsonian Institution will also feature a webpage highlighting events & activities related to jazz.
The 30th Annual Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland runs from April 23 to May 3, 2009 that will be “Celebrating 30 Years of Jazz” in Northeast Ohio.
The Special Collections Department of the Cleveland Public Library will have a temporary installation of several unique and creative chess sets created by students enrolled in the Cleveland Institute of Arts Foundation Design course led by Professor Barbara Stanczak. The sets will be on display from March 30, 2009 to April 10, 2009. Click here to view creative chess sets created by Professor Stanczak's students.
This week the Cleveland Orchestra presents a fully staged production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro." Conductor Franz Welser-Möst leads the orchestra in the first staged opera at Severance Hall for over 30 years. Images from this historic production can be seen here.
You may remember the hilarious gag at the end of the famous Warner Bros. cartoon "Rabbit of Seville" where Bugs Bunny drops Elmer Fudd into a huge wedding cake with the words "The Marriage of Figaro" on it. On April 1st, 2009 (April Fool's Day) at 4PM, the Cleveland Public Library Fine Arts Department will host Case Western Reserve University Associate Professor Daniel Goldmark as he presents "Tunes from the ‘Toons: Cartoon Music from Mickey Mouse to Wall-E" in the Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium. This program is free and appropriate for kids of all ages and will include audio and visual examples of music in cartoons.
A visit to the Popular Library is your chance to pick up the latest best-selling fiction and nonfiction books. The department separates fiction into genres for quick and easy browsing. Choose from mystery, urban fiction, horror, science fiction, gay & lesbian, graphic novels and many more. This spring, Stuart Woods, Amanda Quick, David Baldacci, Mary Higgins Clark, James Patterson, Mary B. Morrison and Lisa Scottoline have new titles coming out. Click on the author's name to place a hold on these hot titles so you will be the first in line to get a copy when they arrive. If none of these titles strike your fancy, stop by or call the Popular Library to find a new book that you will love.
Photo courtesy of Marianne Pedersen
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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 200th anniversary of Edward FitzGerald's birth, and the 150th 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 12th 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.