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The history of the Cleveland County Library System begins with six friends: Mrs. Madge Webb Riley, sisters Oeland, Cora, and Fan Barnett, Anne Miller, and Mayme Jones, who in 1911 founded Cleveland County’s first lending library in a single, unheated room behind the law offices of R.L. Ryburn, Esq., adjacent to the County Court Square. They began with “two tables, two bookcases, six split-bottom chairs, and 50 books,” and were open two afternoons a week, organized and staffed on a completely volunteer basis.
Today, the Cleveland County Library System has two locations: Eugenia H. Young Memorial Library in Shelby and Spangler Branch Library in Lawndale, offering a large collection of books, audiobooks, e-books, video, and e-video. The libraries also provide public meeting spaces, computers and printing services, genealogy and local history collections, outreach services for daycares and the homebound, and programs, events for children, teens, adults, and seniors, and more.
While locations, collections, and services have changed over the course of the past 107 years, the library’s mission has not, and the Cleveland County Library System continues to empower the citizens of Cleveland County and to enhance their quality of life by providing a safe, welcoming environment in which to access relevant information through books an
