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Minutes of the January 21, 2003 meeting

Minutes of Meeting In Board of Trustees

Trustees' Collections Committee

A meeting of the Trustees' Collections Committee was held in the Trustees Room of the Johnson Building at 10:30 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, Senior Project Manager for Industrial Development, Boston Redevelopment Authority; Kathleen Kirleis, Chief Financial Officer; P.A. d'Arbeloff, Communications Officer; 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 December 10, 2002. On a motion duly made and seconded, the Minutes for the Trustees' Collections Committee Meeting on December 10, 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 and Ms. Toni Pollak 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. Once a property has been acquired, the Boston Redevelopment Authority would undertake a space planning use study for the site for developing the Boston Heritage Center project.

The Chairman recalled that the Committee members had 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. However, following an architectural review of the facility, the Chairman reported that it was determined that the property would not meet the future needs for the storage project.

Meanwhile, the installation of the ten-foot high shelving units at the Library's remote storage facility in Norwood, MA has been completed. Donated to the Boston Public Library by the Boston Athenaeum, these stacks replace the original seven-foot high shelving units and increase 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 slated for March 2003.

Additionally, on a parallel track, the Boston Public Library has undertaken an enormous amount of work at the Charlestown service facility 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 had 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.

The Chairman scheduled the next meeting of the Trustees' Collections Committee for Wednesday, March 12, 2003 at 9:30 a.m. There being no further business, the meeting of the Trustees' Collections Committee adjourned at 11:00 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Jamie McGlone
Clerk to the Trustees