About the Department
Collections range from the physical and life sciences to applied technology, needlecraft, handicrafts, and cooking. This department serves students, researchers, casual readers, crafters, and a diverse industrial community.
The Collection
- Engineering: A collection grown in conjunction with Cleveland’s local industry. Metallurgy and chemical, civil and mechanical engineering. Biomechanics, fiber optics and nanotechnology.
- Car and Truck Repair: Traditional printed shop manuals, ranging from a slim pre-WWI manual for the Model T Ford to the massive sets published by modern car makers.
- Chemistry: Includes 100 years of cumulative indexes to Chemical Abstracts.
- Cooking: Dazzling array of ethnic, local interest, and specialty cookbooks. Collection of Florene LaGanke Harris, home economics editor of the Plain Dealer and food editor of the Cleveland Press.
- Crafts: Vast array of craft books on knitting, sewing, embroidery, crocheting, weaving, beading, quilting, scrapbooking, woodworking, and crafts periodicals.
- Dogs: Over 3,000 volumes on specific breeds, stud books, care and training, canine psychology, and texts on breeding, showing and kennel management.
- Gardening: Flowers, trees, shrubs, vegetables, houseplants, fruit, herbs. Garden design, landscape design, and organic gardening. How-to’s for the homesteader, the tree farmer, or the worm rancher. Pest control techniques.
- Geology: Special focus on Ohio and the Great Lakes region. Soil surveys by county, field guides, guides to minerals, rocks and gemstones.
- Industry Standards: Standards developing organization (SDO) documents from groups such as ANSI, ASTM, and IEEE.
- Schematics: Used in repairing radio, TV, and other electronic equipment. Sams Photofact and Sams VCRfacts Services, and Rider’s Perpetual Trouble Shooter’s Manuals.