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Minutes of Meeting In Board of Trustees
Trustees' Collections Committee Tuesday, December 10, 2002

A meeting of the Trustees' Collections Committee was held in the Trustees Room of the Johnson Building at 9:00 a.m.

Present at the meeting were: Trustees Berthé M. Gaines and William O. Taylor; President Bernard A. Margolis; Toni Pollak, Director, Environment Department; Rosaria Salerno, City Clerk; Dr. John McColgan, Deputy Archivist, City of Boston Archives; Dennis Davis, Senior Project Manager for Industrial Development, Boston Redevelopment Authority; Kathleen Kirleis, Chief Financial Officer; P.A. d'Arbeloff, Communications Officer; Gunars Rutkovskis, Volunteer; 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 Meeting on November 19, 2002. On a motion duly made and seconded, the Minutes for the Trustees' Collections Committee Meeting on November 19, 2002 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 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.

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.

As requested at the last meeting, Mr. Davis reported that he pursued the possibility of seeking a 90-day option to purchase a potential site under consideration for the Boston Heritage Center project, which included a 97,000 square foot building with the possibility for adding a second floor to the building, for a total of nearly 200,000 potential square feet of space. However, following discussions with the parties involved in the property, Mr. Davis reported that the results were not favorable and an option to purchase the property was not submitted.

Meanwhile, the Committee members discussed the desirability of exploring retrofitting the Charlestown Service Building, which is owned by the Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, and contains a total of 150,000 square feet with the potential for adding an additional story to the building.

Following further discussion, it was agreed by the Committee members that this option would be pursued, while the search for potential sites would continue to be explored, including pursuing private foundations, trust funds, and capital funding resources earmarked for rehabbing and expanding the Charlestown storage facility.

President Bernard A. Margolis reported that the installation of the ten-foot high shelving units at the Library's remote storage facility in Norwood, MA is nearly complete. Donated to the Boston Public Library by the Boston Athenaeum, these stacks replace the original seven-foot high shelving units and increases the shelving capacity by nearly thirty percent in order to accommodate for the short-term relocation of nearly one-half of the Charlestown Service building holdings and its contents, including the relocation of the historic Jordan Collection of Children's Literature presently housed in Charlestown.

Additionally, on a parallel track, the President reported that the Boston Public Library has undertaken an enormous amount of work at the Charlestown service facility, coordinated by Mr. Gunars Rutkovskis, by paring down and relocating the staff and collections in anticipation of the Library's move to vacate the Charlestown Service building. In addition, the Library has also undertaken measures to prepare the building for the winter heating season coupled with a restoration of the concrete on the exterior façade of the building.

Dr. John McColgan recalled that the City Archives initially was prepared to pursue the possibility of assuming the physical custody of and management responsibility for the City of Boston tax records, 1896-1944 which are currently stored at the Charlestown Service building.

However, subsequent to that offer, Dr. McColgan reported that the City Archives is presently not in a fiscal position to assume the custody and management of the approximately 11,000 volumes of Assessing Department tax records, but that efforts are underway at the City Archives current facility to find storage space for these permanent official City of Boston tax records.

The Chairman scheduled the next meeting of the Trustees' Collections Committee for Wednesday, January 8, 2003 at 9:30 a.m. There being no further business, the meeting of the Trustees' Collections Committee adjourned at 9:45 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Jamie McGlone
Clerk to the Trustees