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Boston Public Library Trustees' Collections Committee Board of Trustees |
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June 7, 2001 Minutes of Meeting In Board of Trustees Trustees’ Collections Committee Thursday, June 7, 2001 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; Ms. Rosaria Salerno, City Clerk; Dr. John McColgan, Deputy Archivist, City of Boston Archives; Toni Pollak, Director, Environment Department; Dennis Davis, Senior Project Manager for Industrial Development, Boston Redevelopment Authority; Kathleen Kirleis, Chief Financial Officer, Gunars Rutkovskis, Assistant Director for Resources and Research Library Services, Boston Public Library; and Jamie McGlone, Clerk to the Trustees. 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 April 25, 2001. On a motion duly made and seconded, the Minutes for the Trustees’ Collections Meeting on April 25, 2001 were approved. The Chairman stated that the principal purpose of the meeting is to hear an update on the progress being made toward the acquisition of property on Hampden Street, Roxbury, MA for the purpose of building a new state-of-the-art consolidated storage facility referred to as the Boston Heritage Center. In addition, the Chairman noted that the Committee would hear updates on the anticipated moving of the Charlestown Service Building holdings, the developing plans for increasing the storage capacity of the Library’s remote storage facility in Norwood, MA, a status report on the NEDL agreements with Harvard University, and a proposed Policy on "Out of Scope" Gifts. President Bernard A. Margolis provided background information on a proposed Policy on "Out of Scope" Gifts pertaining to the donation of gifts, offers and bequests of material that do not fit into the existing scope or current collection policy of the Boston Public Library. In these cases, it is suggested that curators whose departments normally would cover this area be included in the Library’s decision-making process in collaboration with the Library president regarding acceptance or rejection of the gift. The President recommended that Library curators and the Library president shall use the following criteria in determining whether "out of scope" items are appropriate for retention by the BPL: the item is of significant enough connection to the history of Boston or New England or to the Public Library itself to warrant inclusion; there is no other appropriate or available institutional home within the City of Boston; the care and maintenance of the item will not consume inordinate resources which might be better applied to items within the Library’s collection development policy; and the significance of the material as a document of the intellectual and artistic life of the community is such that its inclusion in the Library collection would add to the resources already maintained. Further, when it is deemed, upon thorough review by curators and the Library president that acceptance of gifts outside the scope of the Library’s collection development policy is in the best interest of the Library, these gifts will be accepted and placed under the curatorial care of the appropriate Library department. In addition, the acceptance of "out of scope" materials which will consume significant organizational resources requires recommendation by the staff and President and approval by the Trustees. However, should it be the decision of the Library that these items are not appropriate for the Library to accept and maintain, the Library with donor acknowledgement and approval, will use appropriate means of converting these donations to usable resources, including the sale, trade, or other disposal of these items. In response to an inquiry from the Chairman as to whether the City Archives has a collection development policy, Dr. McColgan replied that the legislative mandate of the City Archives is to accession all municipal public records in the City of Boston. However, there are occasional exceptions in the collection which relate to the history of the City of Boston that are not necessarily public records but are generated by City agencies. Following further discussion, on a motion duly made and seconded, the members of the Trustees’ Collections Committee voted to recommend approval of the following policy to the Full Board of Trustees at the September 2001 Trustees’ Meeting:
Mr. Davis provided an update on the progress being made toward the acquisition of the Hampden Street property recalling that an Offer to Purchase the property from the Seller was submitted on November 9, 2000 for a total purchase price of $1,600,000, which was followed by a counter offer from the Seller in the amount of $1,800,000. Mr. Davis further recalled that in an effort to demonstrate due diligence, the Boston Redevelopment Authority requested an independent outside market appraisal of the property which was received late last week from Meredith & Grew. However, the appraisal has not been officially reviewed yet by the BRA’s review appraiser, which came in at slightly under the original offer of $1,600,000 that had been initially rejected by the Seller. Meanwhile, Mr. Davis stated that he is confident the property is worth more than the appraisal, and upon review, it could be adjusted upward for the following reasons: first, the appraisal came in approaching the site as if it were being sold as vacant land when in fact it is not because it is for sale as an industrial building with land; second, the appraiser did not use several recent sales that were located closer to the Hampden Street site. Therefore, Mr. Davis said that it would not be uncommon to review the appraisal and adjust it accordingly based on these criteria. Mr. Davis said that the next steps in the process would be to undertake a review of the recent appraisal, and in the meantime, his office would schedule a meeting with the attorneys from the City of Boston and the Boston Redevelopment Authority and representatives from the Office of Budget Management to determine what the best mechanism would be to proceed with the acquisition of the site, including which party would ultimately purchase the prospective site. In addition, the BRA has requested an environmental review of the site. With respect to a timetable for the project, the Chairman strongly reiterated the importance of completing the negotiations on the purchase of the site as soon as possible given that all parties signed the New England Deposit Library (NEDL) Agreements in April 2001 with Harvard University in which the Boston Public Library’s exit from NEDL in Brighton, MA would generate $2,000,000 earmarked for the Boston Heritage Center project. In addition, the Chairman recalled that the Agreement with Harvard University stipulates that Harvard would only be willing to release the funds at the point in which the Library has a piece of property in the queue designated with plans to proceed with the development of the remote storage facility. Further, the Chairman stated that the Agreement with Harvard also stipulates that the Library would need to complete the storage project within four years (April 2005) or be subject to a challenge for the return of all or part of the money. The President recalled that in a previous discussion with the City’s Corporation Counsel there was a question about whether the Library should proceed now with taking possession of the $2,000,000 from Harvard University based on the signed Agreements and given that an Offer to Purchase the site has been made. To that end, the President recommended that the Library notify Harvard University of the Offer to Purchase the Hampden Street site and begin the process to secure the $2,000,000 within ten business days and start earning interest on the funds, which would also alleviate the concern of making a purchase but not having the money to pay for the site. Further, the President proposed that the funds initially come to the Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston and then be transferred later to the City to acquire the property recalling that the Trustees voted to authorize this resolution at its Board Meeting on November 20, 2000. Following further discussion, on a motion duly made and seconded, it was
Trustee Scaccia inquired about the status of the current market conditions for development in the City of Boston. Mr. Davis responded that the real estate market is experiencing a plateau effect in which the recent 30% annual increases in property values have ceased. However, even in light of the current market conditions, Mr. Davis said that the Seller of the Property appears to be firmly committed to its counter offer of $1,800,000 given that it would be extremely difficult to find two acres of industrial zoned property in the City. Ms. Pollak asked how long it would take to complete the site acquisition process assuming that all parties come to an agreement concerning which party would ultimately acquire the property and the best mechanism to bring the project to fruition. Mr. Davis replied that the transaction to acquire the site could be completed within sixty days of an accepted Offer to Purchase the property, subject to the lack of any environmental issues, for which there is reason to believe very optimistically there are none based on a review of the State environmental records. In the interim, the Chairman reported that representatives from William A. Berry & Son, Inc. have been retained to help analyze some of the due diligence of the various properties the Boston Public Library currently owns pertaining to the Boston Heritage Center project, including both the Norwood and Charlestown facilities, coupled with undertaking a future needs analysis for both the Boston Public Library and the City Archives at the Hampden Street site. To that end, the Chairman underscored that the relocation of all the holdings and materials from the Charlestown Service Building is an absolute priority given its present conditions and therefore due diligence is underway to analyze the capacity of Norwood for the short-term relocation of the Charlestown holdings and contents. The President recalled that the Library is exploring a one-time purchase of 32- foot high-capacity shelving units which would be installed in the vacant spaces in Norwood and portable to the new facility along with a plan to add a mezzanine structure over the remaining portions of the storage property. The President said that while Mr. Andrew O’Brien from William A. Berry & Son remains confident that this schematic plan would address the storage needs of the Library, the latest cost figure he estimated was over $1 million but the Library would recapture most of those costs because the high-level stacks would be moved to the new site. In anticipation of relocating the Charlestown holdings, Mr. Gunars Rutkovskis reported that the Library has conducted a study of the various contents and it has been determined that there are 18,000 shelves needed to be packed and re-shelved, 8,000 cartons that have to be prepared and un-packed, and 40,000 volumes of newspapers that have to be relocated and re-shelved noting that the Charlestown Building serves as a major newspaper depository for the Library. To further that end, Mr. Rutkovskis anticipates that the materials relocation effort from Charlestown to Norwood would require a staffing complement of nine employees including a Supervisor for a period of nine months and would cost an estimated $185,000. The President recalled that the Library had made a request to the City in its FY 2002 operating budget proposal for $1,000,000 earmarked for the relocation of the Charlestown holdings but it was initially rejected pending a bigger plan. The Chairman suggested that the Library pursue the use of the $500,000 which was allocated in the Library’s FY 2002 budget and earmarked for the Boston Heritage Center project to support the initial planning effort for the relocation of materials and contents from the Charlestown Service Building. The Chief Financial Officer proposed as an alternative strategy to also explore the allocation of funds from the Library of Last Recourse budget for the relocation effort given that the scope of work relates to the BPL’s role as the Library of Last Recourse for the Commonwealth. Following further discussion, and on the recommendation of the Chairman, the Collections Committee members concurred that both funding proposals should be pursued by the Library to address the critical need to vacate the Charlestown Building expeditiously. In the interim, the Chairman recommended that the Library begin to prepare the materials in Charlestown for their eventual relocation to Norwood while negotiations are underway for the procurement of the site. The President reported that the Library has begun preliminary efforts toward relocating the contents and services of the Charlestown Building, including disposing of some of the collections, closing down the Bindery operations, relocating Duplicating services, and relocating the Mobile Library Services to the Central Library. In addition, the President reported that the Library is evaluating the future sale or donation to another academic institution of two major collections housed at the Charlestown Building, which include a collection of 350 cartons of Arabic language history materials from the 1960s and a collection of 155 cartons of Hebraic language history materials also from the 1960s. The Chief Financial Officer reported that there is flood recovery work also ongoing at the Charlestown Service Building relating to the processing of gifts from the flood into the collection or disposing of the unusable materials for which funding was provided by the City of Boston. With regard to a timetable, Ms. Pollak suggested that a meeting be held with all the parties involved in the project to develop a timeline and long-term financing plan for the associated costs of the project, including the eventual preparation of capital funding requests to the State, City, and private Foundations to support the development of the new facility. Ms. Salerno provided an update on the ongoing planning efforts around the eventual relocation of the City Archives materials and contents to the future site noting that most of the holdings are well boxed and catalogued. Dr. McColgan concurred and said that he does not anticipate any serious problems with the relocation effort of the City Archives since all of its holdings are tracked in the building. Therefore, Dr. McColgan said that he could easily supply the number of volumes and boxes that would be required to be moved and the anticipated shelf space needed to accommodate the collection. Meanwhile, a set of space needs requirements have been drafted for the City Archives which are tailored to the new site. Ms. Pollak noted also that the relocation efforts for both the Library and the City Archives would entail the movement of fairly low-technology systems and would not require the moving of sophisticated technology systems. Further, the President noted that the recommendation from William A. Berry & Son is to begin in a primitive fashion bar-coding boxes and units so that when they are moved to the high-capacity shelving temporarily in Norwood there would be a control queue for the collection. On a related topic, Dr. McColgan reported that the only material from the City Archives that is presently bar-coded are those documents that are stored off-site at the Commercial Records Center in New Hampshire, which will be relocated and included in the new facility estimated at 10,000 cubic feet of space. Ms. Salerno reported also that she and Dr. McColgan held their first meeting this week with Mr. Davis and the representatives from William A. Berry & Son and expressed that it was very good to begin the preliminary planning efforts for the development of the City Archives at the new site, including a review of the schematic drawings outlining the proposed space needs of the department. The President noted also that there are statutory requirements in terms of the definition of vaults for the storage of archives and public records, which would need to be responded to in the design of the physical structure. Dr. McColgan concurred noting the requirements for the management of archives includes keeping the materials in low-ceiling vaults that would have an impact on the design of the site. The Chairman asked that the President develop a checklist of all the necessary steps needed to be taken to bring the project toward fruition. The Chairman scheduled the next meeting of the Trustees’ Collections Committee for Wednesday, August 29, 2001 at 11:45 a.m. There being no further business, the meeting of the Trustees’ Collections Committee adjourned at 8:45 a.m. Respectfully submitted, Jamie McGlone |
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