Cleveland Director Venable To Retire

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 4/14/2008

• Nine years in the job
• Book on the way
• Recently won levy renewal 

Cleveland Public Library (CPL) Director Andrew Venable will retire July 1 after nine years in the position and a rich career in the library field. The 63-year-old told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he would move to his hometown of Staunton, VA to care for his ailing mother. He said he’d also work on a book about marketing public libraries.

“[F]ew if any” of the city’s assets “are more important than the Cleveland Public Library,” editorialized the Plain Dealer in supporting a March 4 vote on the library’s operating levy. The five year, 5.8-mill replacement operating levy won 65 percent of the vote. It was the second levy that the library won under Venable’s tenure, during which he maintained the library’s stature as one of the best in the country, with a deep research library and well-stocked branches. Among his accomplishments: increased numbers of commmunity partnerships, an emphasis on serving as a repository of community history, and the Greater Access Card, which allows users in the county to access Cuyahoga County libraries, CPL libraries, and members of the CLEVNET consortium.

A profile in the magazine of Case Wastern Reserve University describes how Venable “backed into books,” moving from a business career—he became the first black salesman at a J.C. Penney store while in college during the Civil Rights era—to libraries, working on the business side of CPL before getting his library degree. He directed libraries in East Cleveland and in Gary, IN, before becoming Deputy Director of the District of Columbia Public Library, the position he held before returning to Cleveland in 1997 to be the deputy there.