Cleveland Library is committed to providing materials and services in a variety of formats that satisfy the educational, informational, recreational and cultural needs of our diverse community. The Library supports lifelong independent learning and the individual's need for current, popular and informational materials. Cleveland Library serves as a center for community information, services and activities. Our staff uses traditional and innovative methods and technologies to provide quality library collections, efficient services, and programs.
Cleveland Library's collection reaches 180,000 books and movies, while it prepares another 56,000 new books to give free to local residents.
Join us - donate - volunteer.
Cleveland Library is built and run without taxes -
not municipal, not county, not state, and not federal.
Cleveland, where residents and friends are building a library, when our governments and taxes will not provide one book, one dollar, or one hour of help.
Why start a Library in Cleveland? Cleveland's 5-mile circle has 44,000 residents, 10,000+ children attending 11 schools |
There are no, zero, nada public library books based in Cleveland. Really, none. |
The Standards vs. Reality
Johnston County does not have a county library system, but an affiliation of town libraries. The State and County librarians assured us, our books may not be counted and they don't want to see our annual reports.
Standard - 90% of a library's service popuation will be within a 15-minute drive, with a minimum of 2 books per capita. Resident count provided by Johnston County from DemographicsNow. Book counts from State Library.
Ring Area |
Residents |
Min. Books Needed
at 2 per resident
in ring area |
County Books Housed in Ring Area |
| 40/42 5-mile | 43,773 |
87,546 |
0 from Johnston and Wake Counties |
| 40/42 10-mile | 164,476 |
328,952 |
65,000 Clayton, 0 Wake |
| 40/42 15-minute | 489,895 |
979,790 |
65,000 Clayton, 0 Wake |
| All Johnston Co. | 167,367 |
334,734 |
287,919 in All Johnston County ('08-'09 report - short 46,815) |
Community Response
Between August 2008 and August 2011, appalled and concerned donors responded with 1-3,000 books weekly. Photo below shows one day's donations - 17 cases of books and 155 DVDs..
1 day -155 DVDs
Immediate Needs for Library and Bookmobile
- $1,000 monthly for bar codes, genre labels, shelf labels, tape, and library cards
- $3,000 monthly for lease, utilities, etc.
- install bookmobile entrance waterproofing/weatherproofing for floor and sheetrock - looking for a professional
- touch-up interior and exterior painting - anyone who can use a foam brush to do touchup
- replace two air conditioner cover screws - whoops, someone used the wrong size
- label, clean, and shelve books
- set computer IP addresses
Cleveland Library is an I.R.S. recognized public charity operating a library with donations, not taxes. According to North Carolina Library Association records, all public libraries were privately funded, until the General Assembly authorized Durham to become the first town in North Carolina to raise taxes to fund a public library. North Carolina still has one of the last of the 16 subscription libraries in the country. In 2008, Cleveland Library became one of three libraries, with established hours, serving the public in North Carolina, that did not receive any direct taxpayer funding. Without universal taxpayer funding, the library must charge fees. The three libraries always have the risk of raising their own operating budgets from non-government sources, but they also stay above the fight of politically driven budgets, staff cuts, hour cuts, and stripped book budgets. Cleveland is the only one not in an incorporated area. We have been told that if Cleveland Library affiliates with a county public library system, regardless what Cleveland's board directs, it would have to replace a minimum of 5% or at least 9,000 books each year at a cost of $315,000, plus pay initial catalog conversion fees and annual fees to cover the costs of participation in the county's book catalog. Johnston's towns budget $965,785, the county $475,000, and the state $199,192. Because Cleveland's collection is the largest outside of Smithfield, the annual affiliation costs to Cleveland Library could reach $400-500,000 annually. Community volunteers can save 75% of their library's normal operating budget by eliminating salary and benefit costs. Cleveland was also told by the county staff that it would have to meet a core collection standard before opening, something that Johnston libraries did not do prior to affiliation. While we have to strengthen our collection and purge outdated and worn books, as long as there are multiple library loan arrangements for exchanging books, we see no point in making every library in the state order identical collections. Even Wake's libraries don''t have identical collections. After spending several years searching Wake and Johnston catalogs, we already see the effect of policies, which limit or eliminate major concentrations of facts in their collections. No government money was provided to buy any of Cleveland's first 180,000 books, no public library collection in the county grew as fast as Cleveland, and Cleveland serves the county's largest populated political division from its base library. Let's see how much more we can do in the community, without government support and control. Remember the affiliation costs for 20 years will be about $10 million without the budget for collection growth and the tail will be wagging the dog!
After Cleveland's Basic Needs Ministry tried for six years to get books into circulation in the community via the schools, without success, it surveyed residents for two years, and registered Cleveland Library as a dba and started lending books. By 2011, wiith more than 180,000 books and movies on site, Cleveland Library has more books than 29 North Carolina county, regional, or municipal libraries and more movies than 34 North Carolina county, regional, or municipal libraries. Public librarians from Wake and Johnston counties said they would budget $35 to buy the average book and would have used $6.3 milion in tax dollars to purchase the Cleveland collection. Cleveland had to find a creative way to get the books, because like all libraries started in Johnston, it was blocked from both tax dollars and most corporate and foundation grants. It is the only Johnston library not in an incorporated area, yet it had the most successful start at building a collection. The director simply followed the path of books from creation to the pulp mill, by asking authors, editors, reviewers, publishers, distributors/jobbers, sales reps, dealers, big box stores, new book stores, used book stores, post-library sales, book exchanges, Internet stores, friends, strangers, schools, libraries, civic organizations, and then asked for gift cards to buy some at 30% or so off retail. In the younger years he went into dumpsters, but stopped when no longer able to get out of them. However, he has gone into recyclers' Gaylord’s, before the books were shredded.
The banner photo shows a volunteer dwarfed by one week's additions to the collection, including several cases of new books purchased from Scholastic for the children's library and many new adult hard cover fiction books received from the Durham County Library.
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