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Cleveland Public Library Photographs

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Title	Cleveland Public Library Photographs
Subject	Architecture Literary Ohio Public libraries Library buildings
Place	Cleveland (Ohio) Cuyahoga County (Ohio)
Description	The Cleveland Public Library opened in 1869. At its fourth location, the former site of Cleveland's Central High School, Librarian William Howard Brett became the first director of a major public library to introduce the open shelf plan. The library occupied the building from 1879 to 1901. Fourteen photographs, measuring 8" x 10" (20.32 cm x 25.4 cm) show the building's exterior and interior after it had been remodeled for open-shelf access. Before its adoption in March 1890, patrons had to request books from a catalog or by pointing at books behind glass. After the library instituted the system, patrons were allow direct access to all books, except novels and juvenile stories during the library's busiest hours, and valuable or rare books and medical texts, which were available only to those "of proper age and otherwise qualified to use them." The images are part of the library's archives, which is open by appointment and which maintains a wide range of materials documenting the institution's history. Multiple views document the first floor circulating department and its catalogue tables, registration desk, circulation desk, fiction alcove, German language alcove, circulating alcove, and biography alcove. Additional images capture the second floor reference department, which featured a men's reading room/newspaper room, a women's reading room, a patents and history alcove, and an art and literature alcove. A final photograph, taken in 1898, shows the recently-created children's alcove, an innovation replicated in all of the library's branches by 1900. The purpose of these, according to the 1899 annual report, was to "give all children a cordial welcome, to make them feel at home, to give them all possibly liberty consistent with the rights of others, and to lead them by gentle ways to the use of better books."
Creator	Cleveland Public Library
Date of Original	1893 - 1898
Collection	Cleveland Public Library Archives
Source	Audiovisual material
Submitting Institution	Cleveland Public Library
Type	StillImage
Format	picture

Title	Om53_683009_010
Rights	For rights and reproduction requests, go to the Ohio Historical Society's Audiovisual and Graphic Reproduction Services page at http://www.ohiohistory.org/resource/audiovis/photodup.html; Online access is provided for research purposes only. For rights and reproduction requests or more information, go to http://www.ohiohistory.org/images/information
File Name	Om53_683009_010.tif
Image Height	998
Image Width	788
File Size	234.916 KB

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Cleveland Public Library Photographs

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