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Minutes of the December 16, 2003 Meeting

A Minutes of Meeting In Board of Trustees
Trustees’ Capital Projects Committee Tuesday, December 16, 2003

A meeting of the Trustees’ Collections Committee was held in the Trustees Room of the Johnson Building at 8:00 a.m.

Present at the meeting were: Trustees Angelo M. Scaccia and William O. Taylor; President Bernard A. Margolis; Toni Pollak, Director, Environment Department; Dennis Davis, Deputy Director for Industrial Development, Boston Redevelopment Authority; Dr. John McColgan, Deputy Archivist, City of Boston Archives; Kathleen Kirleis, Chief Financial Officer; Ruth Kowal, Director of Operations; Gunars Rutkovskis, Volunteer; P.A. d’Arbeloff, Executive Director, and Kathleen Kalell, Financial Officer, the Boston Public Library Foundation; Edward Maheigan, Budget and Procurement Manager; and Jamie McGlone, Clerk to the Trustees.

Mr. William O. Taylor, Chairman of the Trustees’ Collections Committee, presiding.

The first item on the order of business was the approval of Minutes for the Trustees’ Collections Committee Meeting on August 27, 2003. On a motion duly made and seconded, the Minutes for the Trustees’ Collections Committee Meeting on August 27, 2003 were approved.

The Chairman reviewed the principal purposes of the meeting which were to hear updates on the progress being made toward the selection and acquisition of property, the continuing relocation and paring down of collections and holdings from the Charlestown Service building, and the ongoing planning efforts for increasing the storage capacity of the Library’s remote storage facility in Norwood, MA for the purpose of building a new state-of-the-art consolidated storage facility, herein referred to as the Boston Heritage Center.

Chairman William O. Taylor acknowledged the enormous amount of work, coordinated by volunteer Mr. Gunars Rutkovskis, ongoing at the Charlestown Service Building to pare down and relocate the collections and holdings in anticipation of the Library’s move to totally vacate the facility.

Mr. Rutkovskis provided an update on the status of the material relocation effort at the Charlestown Service building noting the Library President Bernard A. Margolis and a team of fifteen Library Curators and staff spent an entire day last week at the Service building to assist with the process of sorting out the material and identifying collections for either relocation or discarding. The Curators examined materials which have accumulated over the past fifty years that have never been cataloged or incorporated into the Library collection.

The relocation of the historic Jordan Collection of Children’s Literature to the Library’s storage facility in Norwood, MA has been completed and the remaining holdings represent vast collections of 19th century newspapers, 5,000 boxes of non-cataloged gift books, government documents, maps, audio-visual items, City Archives materials, and City directories which total 60,000 square feet of material.

Meanwhile, Mr. Rutkovskis noted that while great progress has been made toward relocating and paring down the collections the material needs further refinement in terms of identifying subject categories, physical condition, language classification and publication dates in preparation for bringing in book dealers who would be interested in purchasing the more valuable collections.

The Committee discussed the desirability of locating storage space to temporarily accommodate the remaining 60,000 square feet of material, which would complete the entire relocation of all materials and holdings from the Charlestown Service building. Presently, the Boston Public Library’s remote storage facility in Norwood, MA and the storage facility housing the Boston Public Library’s holdings at the New England Deposit Library in Brighton, MA do not have space to accommodate the remaining holdings at the Service building.

Meanwhile, the Committee discussed exploring the availability of other storage site properties for the temporary relocation of the Charlestown materials coupled with the feasibility of retro-fitting the Library’s remote storage facility in Norwood, MA, which is owned by the Library Trustees and totals 58,000 square feet of space on 3 acres of land.

On a related issue, it was noted that William A. Berry & Sons, Inc. had conducted a study of the feasibility of expanding the facility which included a strength test report on the building’s concrete slab for the future expansion of shelving units with the installation of a pallet-racking system. The engineering study by William A. Berry & Sons, Inc. suggests that the floor at the Norwood facility is not adequate to support any additional shelving units without conducting major floor work.

Mr. Dennis Davis provided an update on the ongoing efforts being made toward the potential site selection and acquisition of property for the development of the Boston Heritage Center. Construction of the storage facility would provide for the appropriate storage conditions for the Boston Public Library and City Archives archival and retrospective collections as well as providing convenient public access within the City to these vast collections.

President Bernard A. Margolis, on a separate but related topic, reported that in light of Harvard University’s desire to terminate its agreement with the New England Deposit Library to operate the facility, the governing Board of NEDL has decided to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) to operate the NEDL facility which is due by March 1, 2004.

The President noted that the members of NEDL have urged the Boston Public Library to submit a proposal to operate the storage facility given the BPL’s vested interest in the operation coupled with Harvard’s plan for reducing their use of the building. Therefore, the BPL is seriously exploring making a proposal to the NEDL Board to operate the facility which would open up great opportunities for the Library to relocate the remaining collections housed in the Charlestown Service building and provide the possibility for building out the existing site.

Dr. John McColgan, on the collections front, reported that the City Archives has received a grant from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives to process 400 cubic feet of Boston Public Schools desegregation-era records which encompasses records from 1974 through the early 1990’s. Meanwhile, a collaborative effort is being established to provide public access to these historic Boston archival records.

Dr. McColgan updated the Committee on the efforts underway at the City Archives current facility to find storage space for the approximately 11,000 linear feet of the City of Boston Tax Records, 1896-1944, which are presently housed at the Charlestown Service building, in addition to exploring other viable sites to temporarily address the City Archives storage needs.

There being no further business, the meeting of the Trustees’ Collections Committee adjourned at 9:00 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Jamie McGlone
Clerk to the Trustees