Minutes of the May  7, 2003 Meeting

Minutes of Meeting In Board of Trustees
Trustees’ Collections Committee Wednesday, May 7, 2003

A meeting of the Trustees’ Collections Committee was held in the Trustees Room of the Johnson Building at 10:00 a.m.

Present at the meeting were: Trustee William O. Taylor; President Bernard A. Margolis; Dennis Davis, Senior Project Manager for Industrial Development, Boston Redevelopment Authority; Dr. John McColgan, Deputy Archivist; City of Boston Archives; Kathleen Kirleis, Chief Financial Officer; P.A. d’Arbeloff, Executive Director, 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 Meeting on March 12, 2003. On a motion duly made and seconded, the Minutes for the Trustees’ Collections Committee Meeting on March 12, 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 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. 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.

President Margolis and the Chief Financial Officer reported on 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.

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, City Archives materials, and City directories which total 35,000 square feet of material.

The Committee also discussed the desirability of locating storage space to temporarily accommodate the remaining 35,000 square feet of material, which would complete the entire relocation of all materials and holdings from the Charlestown Service building, coupled with providing space for the Boston Public Library’s holdings at the New England Deposit Library.

Dr. John McColgan updated the Committee on the efforts underway at the City Archives current facility to find storage space for the approximately 11,000 volumes of the City of Boston Tax Records, 1896-1944 which are presently housed at the Charlestown facility.

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 contents.

There being no further business, the meeting of the Trustees’ Collections Committee adjourned at 10:40 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Jamie McGlone
Clerk to the Trustees