The challenges and weaknesses of a growing private library.

Cleveland Library faces a monthly struggle to raise funds for the operating expenses and can only dream of having a book account to freely order the books the community wants and needs.

To provide high quality service, the library needs to recruit service desk staff, assistants to help patrons find books in the stacks, qualified book prep and shelvers, and provide a public access computer to search card catalogs for shelving information.

Volunteers will use 18,000 hours to prepare and shelve the 180,000 book collection.

On March 8, 2011, E-books are not currently available for libraries from Simon & Schuster or Macmillan, and are limited to 26 checkouts from Harper-Collins. The H-C books must then be repurchased. The Chicago Tribune reports financially strapped public libraries reduced their inventories because of budget constraints. Will this change the policy that public libraries are to throw out 5% or so of their collection each year?