Score One for the Librarians

CPL librarian Christopher Busta-Peck broke this story on his blog last week, and now it's in the PD.

Excerpt:

A house where writer Langston Hughes lived during high school -- a time when he was developing his famously poetic voice -- was sold at a sheriff's auction in February.....

In a city pummeled by foreclosures -- there were 7,100 filings in 2008 alone -- this one might have escaped particular notice but for a librarian who wanted to make local history come alive for kids.

"If you show them these important people lived in the places they live in, it makes the history more real," said Christopher Busta-Peck, a youth-services librarian at the Hough branch of the Cleveland Public Library.

So Busta-Peck went sleuthing with the help of some library colleagues, who found a two-volume biography on Hughes that listed five Cleveland addresses where over two decades the writer lived for varying periods between stretches in New York and elsewhere.....

Continue reading "House where Langston Hughes lived in Cleveland is foreclosed on, sold at sheriff's auction"