The Ohio public library system grew larger in its second century. In 2002, the system provides service to all of Ohio's 88 counties. Its total circulation among its over 400 branches is 90 million items per year. In addition, Ohio boasts over 100 specialty libraries owned and operated by private companies and institutions such as hospitals. These libraries most often house information that is essential to employees and their jobs. One of the most interesting specialty libraries is located in Canton, Ohio at the Professional Football Hall of Fame. It is a research center that contains scrapbooks, program guides, news releases and other assorted football ephemera.

Publishing

Early in its history, Cincinnati became the publishing center of the West, especially for schoolbooks. However, Dayton, Springfield, Canton, Akron, Columbus, and Cleveland also had strong publishing centers. Maxwell Code, a book on the laws of the Northwest Territory was published in 1796, becoming the first book printed in Ohio. Another early work was Dr. Daniel Drake's Picture of Cincinnati issued in 1815. The first published history of Ohio was Salmon P. Chase's work Preliminary Sketch of the History of Ohio (1833). Caleb Atwater followed this with his work History of the State of Ohio in 1838. Literary and philosophical societies began to grow in popularity, as did the sales of literary magazines, popular ladies magazines, and poetry.

As the library system of Ohio has grown, so has the business of publishing. Early in the twentieth century, Ohio was home to at least 20 publishing companies. As the century progressed, however, publishers began to move out of Ohio and into larger cities, such as New York and Chicago. During the 1980s, the state lost big name publishers from both Cincinnati and Cleveland.

Publishing Notables

• Isaac Funk (1839-1912) from Clifton (Greene County) was a successful publisher and half of Funk and Wagnalls publishing company.
• Dard Hunter (1883-1966) was a Stuebenville artist who authored over 20 books on papermaking. His most famous work is My Life with Paper.
• John Kilbourn (1787-1831) from Worthington published Ohio's first best seller, The Ohio Gazetteer, in 1816.
• Albert N. Marquis (1855-1943) of Brown County began publishing Who's Who in America in 1899.
• William Norton (1891-1947) of Springfield started the publishing company W. W. Norton & Company.

Newspapers

The newspaper industry thrived throughout much of Ohio's history. More than one hundred periodicals were published in the Ohio Valley prior to 1860, with more than 90 printed in the state. However, although Cincinnati and Hamilton County boasted sixty newspapers in 1880, by 1900 only six of those survived. One of those six was the Cincinnati Enquirer, which was founded in 1841 and is still being published today.

By 1850s there were strong papers in each of Ohio's main cities. Newspapers were frequently influential in politics. For example, Charles Hammond, editor of Cincinnati Gazette used the paper to attack Democrats and the Cincinnati Enquirer became the leading Democratic paper in the 1840s.

Despite the advent of both the radio and the television in the twentieth century, the newspaper remained the greatest tool for mass communication. In Ohio, the largest dailies, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Columbus Dispatch, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer all maintain large circulations today. These three largest newspapers are a few among many. There are more than eighty daily newspapers in Ohio, which together total 2.5 million subscribers. Even more numerous are the 220 weekly newspapers that are published in Ohio.