The Michael Schwartz Library: CSU’s center of research, learning & creativity, focused on student success ________________________________________________________________
The Michael Schwartz Library is so much more than books! As the heart of Cleveland State’s campus, we provide access to learning and research resources, collaborative and quiet study spaces, computers, software, and loanable technology. Our expert librarians and staff are available to work with students and faculty on and off-campus, in person, via telephone, chat, text, or Zoom.
While no one has ever graduated from the Michael Schwartz Library, no one at CSU has ever graduated without our resources!
We invite you to join us in our efforts. Our track record is impressive: we have a long history of using donations and partnerships to build collections, update technology, and enhance our facilities to ensure student success. Your gift helps ensure that CSU students and faculty have access to the research tools, facilities, unique local resources, and personalized support and guidance they need to succeed. We encourage you to review our current priorities and support what matters most to you.
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LIBRARY UNRESTRICTED FUND: DONATE TO THE AREA OF GREATEST NEED This flexible fund supports the Michael Schwartz Library with strategic, immediate priorities, ongoing operations and new opportunities. Your support for this fund gives us the agility to adapt and direct the resources to where they will do the most good, and ensures the library is responsive in anticipating and meeting the rapidly changing needs of students and faculty.
Recent and ongoing initiatives funded through individual donations to our unrestricted fund include:
- The Digital Design Studio: The library’s reimagined Digital Design Studio provides access to multimedia software like Adobe’s Creative Cloud, powerful PCs and Mac computers, as well as borrowable equipment like digital cameras, microphones and camcorders in support of the University's new School of Film & Media Arts. The library continues to expand offerings in this area, including the recent addition of a podcast studio and Cricut cutting machine. Help the library continue to invest in this rapidly expanding area.
- Information resources: Books, journals, videos and data sets are the foundation for teaching, learning, and research at Cleveland State University. Our meticulously curated online collections, built in close collaboration with CSU faculty, average nearly 1 million uses per year.
- The Textbook Center (part of our Affordable Learning Initiative): The Textbook Center began as a pilot project in 2017 with an initial purchase of 30 carefully selected, high-impact/high-cost textbooks made available for 2-hour loans to current students. The effort was an immediate success, allowing large classes to share access to a single copy of these expensive required texts. Now numbering in the hundreds of items and curated in collaboration with the CSU Bookstore, these materials have become an indispensable resource. Our Textbook Center acts as a vital safety net for students who might otherwise drop classes or even leave school as the cost of textbooks and other course materials continues to rise.
Success Story: The Virginia McFrederick Group Study Center A generous legacy from alumna benefactor Virginia McFrederick enabled us to design and build this beautiful suite of study rooms, providing a bright and inspiring space for our students to engage in collaborative projects or study related to their course work. The Center joins several other technology-enhanced spaces in the library intended to support collaborative learning, and has proven one of the most popular.
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CURRENT PRIORITY: Special Collections, Local History & Cleveland Memory Cleveland Memory is visited by nearly three quarters of a million researchers annually. You may choose to contribute to a special fund established for the purchase of local history materials for the Michael Schwartz Library's Special Collections, birthplace of this pioneering web site. Donor support grows, preserves, and facilitates digitization and sharing of the unique and treasured collections there, which inform and inspire our students, broaden awareness of Cleveland State across the region and beyond, and have created an engaged network of friends, supporters, and volunteers, who now think of Cleveland Memory as "theirs", and Cleveland State as an asset to the greater community.
Our current and most ambitious initiative is to digitize and make available the public domain content of the entire 104-year run of the Cleveland Press, the city's evening newspaper published from 1878 until 1982.
“Journalism is the first draft of history”. This is a refrain we hear often in an increasing number of pleas from our visitors: historians, former Press writers, current researchers and concerned citizens all urging us to create a searchable, digital Cleveland Press archive. The Cleveland Plain Dealer is widely available online from public libraries, but thorny copyright issues have long prevented the creation of a similar online archive of the Press, which had an entirely different ethos, style, and editorial voice. This voice is in real danger of being lost, along with a century of groundbreaking investigative reporting, details of civic life and lively accounts of local events, offering context and insight into political and social issues of 20th century Cleveland.
We have at last worked out the copyright issues and are inviting partners to help us fund the digitization and save the legacy of the Press. Your contribution to this vital effort will serve as a gift to future generations, preserving and safeguarding access to an irreplaceable treasure and capturing a richer picture of our city – which is what Cleveland Memory is all about.
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CURRENT PRIORITY: Friends of the Michael Schwartz Library
The Friends of the Library is closely associated with the Michael Schwartz Library, but is an independent organization whose purpose is to support the library and its activities by sponsoring events such as book discussions, book sales, and local author book talks. Our programs engage the University and the broader communities – and encourage ongoing cultural and intellectual exchange.
The Friends encourage monetary gifts to the library, and also accept gifts of books – particularly materials with strong links to the Cleveland area. These donations may be added to our collections, if appropriate, sold as part of fundraising efforts, or recycled.
