Cleveland Public Library

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Front entrance to the Cleveland Public Library's central location on Superior Avenue.

The Cleveland Public Library was founded in 1869 and is located in Cleveland, Ohio. Its mission is "to be the best urban library system in the country by providing access to the worldwide information that people and organizations need in a timely, convenient, and equitable manner." To that end, the Cleveland Public Library maintains its Main Library on Superior Avenue in downtown Cleveland has 28 branches throughout the city as well as a mobile library and a library for the blind and physically handicapped.

In 1915 the Cleveland architectural firm of Walker and Weeks won a competition to design a new library building. The actualizing of their classical Renaissance design was delayed during due to the First World War and construction was not begun until 1923.

The Main Library consists of two buildings, connected by an underground corridor that lies below a reading garden situated between the two. The reading garden was designed by the Olin Partnership and includes sculptures by Maya Lin and Tom Otterness. The older of the two buildings was completed on May 6, 1925 and was renovated between 1997 to 1999. The renovations included the restoration of large a mural painted by Ora Coltman in 1934 for the Federal Arts Project. The Intermuseum Conservation Association was contracted restore and reinstall the piece.^[1] The second building, named after former U.S. Congressman Louis Stokes, was dedicated in 1997.

The Main Library contains a number of special collections, including the Mears and Murdock baseball collections, the Cleveland Theater collection, the John G. White chess and checkers collection, a 130,000-volume children's collection, a 74,000-volume rare book collection, and collection of 1.3 million photographs. As of 2002, the Main Building had annual attendance of 804,692, annual circulation of 1,698,928 items, and a collection totaling 9,745,655 items. The Cleveland Public Library branches are members of CLEVNET, a consortium of 28 public libraries throughout northern Ohio.