Cleveland’s public library has been the state’s mandated provider of library services for Ohio’s visually impaired since 2009. Known as the Ohio Library for the Blind and Print Disabled [OLBPD], it provides materials in Braille, audio and other adaptive technologies to serve those with visual impairments or other disabilities that make it difficult to read print. 

Cleveland Public Library’s Board of Trustees opened its meeting on Tuesday, June 17, hearing from Will Reed, director of the Ohio Library for the Blind and Print Disabled. Reed expanded further on the state’s budget allotment for the library, which totals $1,508,194. Reed said state budget cuts to libraries in general did not impact the OLBPD.

Santhi Majji, who is visually disabled and works at OLBPD as a library assistant, shared her experiences with the board as both a patron and employee.  

“The library gave me so much,” she said. “It gave me a big family, a very respectable position, a very high-paying position, and … it provided the [means] to become successful. As an employee, I’m very, very proud and very happy working in the library.”

101-year-old OLBPD patron leaves $10K gift in will

CPL’s Board of Trustees moved to accept a $10,000 gift from the estate of Marjorie H. Wells of Westerville, Ohio, who passed away April 12 at the age of 101. According to the resolution, Wells lost her eyesight in 2010 and loved the audio books she used through OLBPD. The money will be deposited into the library’s Endowment for the Blind Fund Account for Restricted Gifts.

Mold remediation needed at library off-site storage facility

Cleveland Public Library’s Board of Trustees also approved two resolutions to remove and relocate 78,000 linear feet of books to the main library following an outbreak of mold in an off-site storage facility. The maximum estimated cost of the move and the mold remediation is about $1 million.  

John Skrtic, CPL’s chief of Special Projects and Collections, told Signal Cleveland the books and periodicals affected are part of the library’s historical collection.

“Many of these items are not easily replaced,” he said. “They are not recent publications, but materials that have been part of our collection for decades.”

“In this case, it is more cost-effective to clean the existing books rather than spend significant librarian time searching for replacement copies, reordering and reprocessing them,” he added.

Join the movement for transparency

Civic power can start with you! We train and pay Documenters to take notes at local government meetings and share them here. Learn more about becoming a Documenter.

Skrtic added that the existing mold bloom is contained to only a specific portion of the materials within the off-site storage facility. 

Michael Ruffing, director of Special Projects for the Cleveland Public Library, explained the mold remediation process to the board.

“The goal of this is to reduce the mold spores that are present in the collection,” he said. “There’s a tremendous amount of vacuuming, with a HEPA filter vacuum that will capture the spores that are present on top of, on the sides of the materials, and then they wipe them with a cosmetic sponge to remove the discoloration from any mold bloom … then clean the shelves.”