Thank you for visiting our community library.  The Clear Lake Public Library offers resources for persons of all ages to assist you in pursuing special interests, provide for your information needs, support formal education and lifelong learning and to enable you to be successful in reaching personal and professional goals.  The library's friendly well trained staff are ready to answer your questions and assist you in your use of the library. 

To apply for a free library card, please provide a photo ID with proof of current address.  A parent or legal guardian should accompany any child in fifth grade or below to sign as the responsible party for the child’s library card.  Please update your email address with us at clplib@netins.net in order that we may provide you with timely information about your library account. Thank you.

Contact library staff at 641-357-6133 (Adult Desk), 641-357-0315 (Youth Desk) or clplib@netins.net.

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Library will update elevator during May

 The Clear Lake Public Library will be updating its elevator starting Monday, May 6.  The elevator will be out of service for the remainder of the month as its operating apparatus is modernized.  This elevator made the building accessible for all persons when it was installed during the library’s 1980 expansion and remodeling project.  The library regrets this temporary inconvenience.  Persons unable to access the library facility while the elevator is out of operation are encouraged to contact the library at 357-6134 to arrange for alternative delivery of library materials and services.

Clear Lake Public Library cardholders can now access the library’s Zinio online magazine subscription.  Zinio is currently the world’s largest provider of digital magazine content.  Cardholders may use their card number to establish a Zinio account through the library’s subscription for free downloads from the library’s 35 title collection of digital magazines.  There are no due dates for Zinio items and content remains on the user’s device until the user deletes it.  Zinio digital magazines can be read on most devices with Internet capability and offers free apps for devices such as PCs, Macs, iPhone, iPad, Android and Kindle Fire.  The Nook e-reader is not compatible with Zinio.  Click here or on the Zinio icon above and enter your library card number to set up your Zinio account.  Zinio for Clear Lake library users is sponsored by the Clear Lake Public Library Foundation.

Zinio is user friendly.  To familiarize persons with Zinio, training sessions will be offered at the library on Saturday, March 16 from 10:30-11:30 a.m. (for PC and iPad users).  These sessions are free and open to the public.  Please call the library at 357-6133 or visit the adult desk to sign up for one of these sessions.

Search Your Family Tree

The library now offers access to two popular genealogy databases for your use.  AncestryLibrary.com (the library edition of Ancestry.com) is available for use only in the library.  HeritageQuestOnline.com (HQO) is available at the library and at home (remote access).  Both products offer census records, public records, immigration information and other genealogical resources.  The Clear Lake Public Library Foundation funds both AncestryLibrary.com and HQO.

TumbleBooksLibrary is an online resource now available to you as a patron of the Clear Lake Public Library.  The TumbleBooksLibrary is a collection for children of TumbleBooks (animated, talking picture books) with fiction, non-fiction and foreign language titles, Read-Alongs (chapter books with sentence highlighting and narration but no animation), E-books and Audio Books which may be viewed online or downloaded for 90 days, and Tumble Puzzles & Games.  TumbleBooks are created from existing picture books which the company has licensed from children's book publishers and converted to the TumbleBook format. 

Visit the Clear Lake Public Library to find out how to access the complete array of TumbleBooks features wherever the internet is available.  The subscription to TumbleBooksLibrary is a gift from the Friends of the Clear Lake Public Library.

The Clear Lake Public Library is now offering Freegal Music to its card holders. Freegal is a downloadable music service that offers hundreds of thousands of songs in a wide variety of genres.  Library users may preview a song before downloading it to any MP3 compatible device.  Card holders may download up to three songs per week at no charge and with no due dates.  Click on the Freegal Music icon and enter your library card number to set up your Freegal account.  Freegal Music for Clear Lake library users is sponsored by the Clear Lake Public Library Foundation and Friends of the Library.

            In addition to downloadable audiobooks, the Clear Lake Public Library now offers access to ebooks.  The library contracts with a company to provide ebook access to library card holders who live within the city limits of Clear Lake or in rural Cerro Gordo County.  They may access NEIBORS through the icon on the library website or at http://neibors.lib.overdrive.com. Use your library card to establish a NEIBORS account if you have not done so previously.  You may have two NEIBORS ebooks checked out to your card at a time.  The ebook loan period is 7 days, but if you finish an ebook in a shorter amount of time you may return it and check out another.  A variety of titles by contemporary authors are available in the NEIBORS collection.  NEIBORS is compatible with most ebook reading devices.

            NEIBORS also provides unlimited free access to over 34,000 ebooks available through Project Gutenberg.  Project Gutenberg digitalizes fiction and nonfiction titles available in the public domain (copyright free.)  Gutenberg titles borrowed do not count against the limit of two contemporary NEIBORS ebooks.