Meg Muckenhaupt On Boston's Green Spaces and Their Changing Use From 1600s to Contemporary Times

May 17th, 2011

When Meg Muckenhaupt comes to the South End Library next Tuesday, she will examine the role of public spaces throughout Boston's historic and contemporary landscape and talk about the changing roles of green space in the Boston area since the 1600s. The author of Boston's Gardens & Green Spaces was born in New Jersey and graduated from Harvard. She has written for the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine and the Boston Phoenix. She currently edits the Belmont Citizens Forum Newsletter and lives in Lexington, MA. Copies of her book will be available at the reading. A light reception will follow the talk.

As James Carroll Leaves the Library's Board, City Councillors Have the Chance to Influence the Mayor's Next Nomination...But Will They?

BPL trustee and Boston Globe columnist James Carroll has resigned from the Library's Board after eleven years. The announcement was made this week at the BPL's Annual Meeting at Copley Library. Carroll's resignation opens the door for Boston city councillors to initiate a public vetting process of new BPL trustees. Currently, Boston's mayor nominates each new member, the city council issues a pro-forma approval without public input, and a new trustee appears at the next BPL public meeting. Based on past performance, the newcomer makes no statement about his or her intentions for the public library post, nor is information about  his or her background made available that would explain suitability for the board that governs the BPL and its more than $50 million in trust funds. As last year's fight over library closures showed, votes by trustees can make a difference in how a library is governed.

A trustee devoted to the idea of libraries, books and their safe-keeping for future generations, Carroll had the misfortune in his most recent years as a library board member to find himself in an environment that did not seem conducive to his goals. Mayor Menino, who had appointed him, had usurped the BPL's autonomy and consolidated control over  every aspect of BPL's governance, including the library's trust funds and foundation. Fellow trustees seemed asleep at the wheel while library budgets were cut brutally. The July 2008 Neighborhood Services Task Force Report that Carroll produced over several years, suggesting ways to take the BPL into the 21st Century, sat idly on a shelf and was not made electronically available until FOSEL asked for its web publication many months later. (The report has since become the basis for the current long-term strategic planning process headed by trustee Byron Rushing, under the new "Compass for Excellence" label.)

An author who twice won National Book Awards, Carroll advocated time and again at trustee meetings for funds to preserve and catalogue the BPL's treasures. Each time, he was politely but firmly swatted down by  chair Jeffrey Rudman, who first and foremost is the mayor's man on the trustee board, and inclined to say, "we can't afford it." The BPL Foundation, moreover, until recently had a dedicated but inexperienced volunteer in charge of fundraising, with the predictable results that donations barely paid for the expenses and salaries of the -minimal- Foundation staff. An unfortunate trustee vote to approve an executive  housing allowance for the BPL president out of the Foundation's account further tarnished its image. At the same time, advocacy for library funding at the State Legislature and the Congressional level had mysteriously ceased.

When in March 2008 Menino proposed unilaterally to close the Kirstein Business Library in the financial center, Carroll, a one-time priest not given to loud oratory, protested vigorously and made a point of having his comments about the lack of public process inserted in the trustees' minutes. He was joined by trustee Donna DePrisco. In a subsequent, private, conversation Carroll called the Kirstein closing " a terrible decision." But Menino prevailed, and moved the Kirstein collection and its more than $7 million Thomas Drey trust fund to Copley Library, where it is now helping to  pay for operational expenses (off-setting municipal contributions to the BPL). The elimination of the Kirstein Business Branch turned out to be the first salvo in a much larger plan by the mayor to close up to a third of the branches. Ironically, Carroll had convinced himself by that time that closing some branches would strengthen the remaining ones, probably since no money seemed to be coming from anywhere else. But library users wanted none of it. The proposed closures ignited a severe public backlash.

Since Menino appointed one of his most vocal critics, long-time library advocate and  State Rep. Byron Rushing to an open seat on the  library board,  its slumberous trustees, awakened by the inconvenient noise of outraged library supporters, have taken to the betterment of the BPL with an enthusiasm and steady commitment that would have been hard to predict as little as a year ago. Trustee Paul LaCamera, for example, has secured a seasoned fundraiser at the BPL Foundation, David McKay, who reportedly raised $50 million for Berklee College. And come again have the days when the BPL is advocating for funds at the State Legislature, likely under careful tutelage of Rep. Rushing. Even the proceeds of the future sale of the now-vacant Kirstein Library building downtown will be used for "charitable library purposes," according to chair Rudman. Previously, the sale of all BPL real property reverted to the city's General Fund, further draining the public library's assets to benefit non-library muncipal departments.

Filling James Carroll's seat with a nominee who is a true advocate for the BPL's autonomous interests matters because any of the recent improvements in BPL governance can be easily reversed or weakened. At the moment, there are no term limits on the nine-member board. Qualifications or attendance requirements for library board trustees are not  published. One of the seats is held by Berthe M. Gaines, who has a history of strong library advocacy. However, she has not been seen at trustee meetings for years. Similarly, conflicts of interest among some trustees and their private business interests have been raised in the past by Boston Globe reporter Donovan Slack in 2008, and should be addressed.

Confirming the next BPL trustee is the city council's first opportunity to influence BPL's board of trustees. Will the councillors rise to the occasion? If you let them know you want them to, they may do just that. Here's the contact info...

South End Library's Staff Needs Volunteers for its Book Sale, Saturday, May 21, 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM

The South End Library staff is holding its annual book sale in Library Park on Saturday, May 21, but needs volunteers to help make their revenue dreams come true. Carrying tables, putting out the (already sorted) books from their boxes, keeping track of the cash, and helping the book lovers find their favorites are among the tasks. Hardcovers will go for $1 and paperbacks for 50 cents. No surcharge for gas..just kidding. Come and enjoy, a book is your best friend: you can take it anywhere and it will not complain.

Author of "Boston's Gardens & Green Spaces" to Speak at the South End Library on Tuesday, May 17, 6:30 PM

When Meg Muckenhaupt comes to the South End Library next Tuesday, she will examine the role of public spaces throughout Boston's historic and contemporary landscape and talk about the changing roles of green space in the Boston area since the 1600s. The author of Boston's Gardens & Green Spaces was born in New Jersey and graduated from Harvard. She has written for the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine and the Boston Phoenix. She currently edits the Belmont Citizens Forum Newsletter and lives in Lexington, MA. Copies of her book will be available at the reading. A light reception will follow the talk.

On an Upward Swing, Library Board Trustees Meet for Strategic Planning Session and Hire a New (and Experienced) Director for its Foundation

The upward swing at the Boston Public Library is continuing apace with the recent hiring of David McKay, an experienced fundraiser to head the anemic Boston Public Library Foundation, and the brainstorming at the committee level of a group of trustees and library luminaries about how to make the BPL "better than anyone," as trustee Carol Folpe put it. "Let's stretch ourselves, reach for the stars," she said. McKay, who is scheduled to meet with library Friends groups next month for a Q and A, has most recently built a development program at Berklee College that raised $50 million for a capital campaign. Previously, McKay served in development and alumni affairs positions at Trinity College of Vermont, Medical College of Georgia, Norwich University, and Vanderbilt University.

At the April 13 Compass strategic planning committee meeting, trustees and other members looked at several other library systems' long-range plans, including the British Library's and Seattle's. Trustee Zamawa Arenas liked the way the British Library saw fostering economic growth and development as an appropriate library function. BPL president Amy Ryan brought up visual presentation of library services as an important feature, especially as illiteracy in Boston may be as high as 23 percent. Bridging the digital divide, creating "green" libraries, weaving the BPL's history into its technology, developing sustainable partnerships and forging a user-centered institution crowded the wish list, as did innovation and intensive use of social media.

Members of the committee, chaired by Representative Byron Rushing, include:

  • Rep. Byron Rushing, Boston Public Library Board of Trustees
  • Carol Fulp, Boston Public Library Board of Trustees
  • Zamawa Arenas, Boston Public Library Board of Trustees
  • Amy E. Ryan, President, Boston Public Library
  • Meg Campbell, Executive Director, Codman Academy Charter Public School
  • Alice Hennessey, Special Assistant to Mayor Thomas M. Menino, City of Boston
  • Mimi Jones, Friends of Dudley Branch Library
  • Ronaldo Rauseo-Ricupero, Esq., Associate, Nixon Peabody LLP
  • Pamela Seigle, Former Trustee, Boston Public Library; Executive Director, Courage & Renewal Northeast at Wellesley College

The goal is for the committee to present a final plan to the trustees by the end of the year. Between then and now, the public will be apprised of  progress and invited to comment on the plan's details. The next such roundtable will be Thursday, May 5, at the West Roxbury Branch, from 6:00 – 7:00 pm. The next strategic planning committee session will be held at Copley Library in mid-June.

There will be a second set of Compass roundtables during the summer. Visitwww.bpl.org/compass for additional details or send comments via email tocompass@bpl.org.

A China Memoir: Susan Conley Will Read from her Book, "The Foremost Good Fortune" at the SE Library Tuesday, April 26, at 6:30 PM

The South End Writes program will host Susan Conley on Tuesday night, April 26 at the South End Library where she will read from her China memoir, The Foremost Good Fortune, which describes the years she spent there recently with her husband and two young sons. She was diagnosed with breast cancer while in Beijing: the experience of battling the disease in a culture so different from ours is a focus of the book. Conley, a former South End resident, is currently living in Portland, Maine, where she founded a creative-writing lab, The Telling Room. She has been published in the New York Times, the Paris Review and Ploughshares.

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Fourth Annual Easter Egg Hunt at Library Park Sunday, April 24, 11 AM - 1 PM

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The Easter Bunny's suit has been delivered to Easter Egg Hunt headquarters in the South End. The eggs are being filled with candy, poems, riddles and knock-knock jokes. The Easter baskets have been pulled from the closet. The Parks Department has its brooms ready to clean Library Park. Area D4 Police will assist street crossing, so all is about ready for the Fourth Annual Easter Egg Hunt at Library Park. As always, there will be a separate safe area for the littlest egg-hunters. Be there at 11:00 sharp on Sunday, April 24. See you there.....

Boston Public Library Foundation Gets New Leader

 April 6, 2011                                                                                         

David McKay Named Executive Director of Boston Public Library Foundation

Experienced leader will advance the Foundation’s strategy

BOSTON – April 6, 2011 – The Boston Public Library and Boston Public Library Foundation today jointly announced the selection of David M. McKay as executive director of the Boston Public Library Foundation, effective May 4, 2011.

McKay has an impressive 30-year record of leading successful development programs for colleges and universities. He currently serves as vice president for institutional advancement at the Berklee College of Music, where he has worked for the past 12 years. At Berklee, McKay served on the President's Council and Cabinet, and built a development program from one that raised just under $1 million annually into one that culminated in a successful $50 million campaign. He chaired task forces on college-wide and alumni strategic initiatives, and was also responsible for alumni affairs, the alumni magazine, and giving websites. Previously, McKay served in development and alumni affairs positions at Trinity College of Vermont, Medical College of Georgia, Norwich University, and Vanderbilt University.

“In the 21st century, libraries have never been more important,” said Mayor Thomas M. Menino. “The Boston Public Library is both a world-renowned center of learning and a vital element of the neighborhoods of Boston. David is well qualified to lead the Boston Public Library Foundation and truly propel the advancement of the BPL."

“David has the credentials, experience, and leadership skills to advance the Foundation’s mission to support the Boston Public Library,” said Ronald P. O’Hanley, chairman of the Boston Public Library Foundation Board of Directors. “He has the passion and commitment needed to expand the development function for the Foundation and increase support for both the Foundation’s and the Library’s objectives.”

In his new role, McKay will lead all development activities, member relations, and external affairs for the Boston Public Library Foundation. He also will be responsible for the design, development, and implementation of a broad-based fundraising program to increase financial support for the Foundation, and will cultivate and nurture relationships with existing and prospective donors, including individuals, corporations, and foundations.

“I am honored to lead the Boston Public Library Foundation and support the Boston Public Library, a centerpiece of the Boston community and gateway to information for all its residents,” McKay said. “I look forward to connecting to the broad range of supporters that the library already has and building new relationships to help sustain the library into the future.”

The Boston Public Library Foundation was created in 1992 to build a new partnership among civic-minded individuals, the corporate community, and public funders. The combined strength and leadership of this partnership has not wavered over the years and has enabled the Foundation to raise more than $80 million. The core mission of the Foundation has remained unchanged since first drafted: to enhance the public visibility and to raise public and private funds in support of the revitalization of the Boston Public Library.

“This is an ideal moment for the Boston Public Library to gain the expertise of a development expert like David,” said Amy E. Ryan, president of the Boston Public Library. “With our community-defined strategic planning principles in place, expanded support from the Boston Public Library Foundation will truly help bring these principles to life.”

 

About the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY For more than 160 years, the Boston Public Library has pioneered public library service in America. Established in 1848, the Boston Public Library was the first publicly supported municipal library in America, the first public library to lend books, the first to have a branch library, and the first to have a children’s room. Today, the Boston Public Library has 27 neighborhood locations, including the Central Library in Copley Square. Each year, the Boston Public Library hosts nearly 12,000 programs, answers more than one million reference questions, and serves millions of people. All of its programs and exhibits are free and open to the public. At the Boston Public Library, books are just the beginning. To learn more, visit www.bpl.org.

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Author Susan Conley to Read From Her Memoir, The Foremost Good Fortune, on April 26, at the South End Library, at 6:30 PM

The next South End Writes event at the South End Library will feature Susan Conley, who will read from  her debut-memoir, "The Foremost Good Fortune" on Tuesday, April 26, at 6:30 PM. Conley, who reported from China for the New York Times about the H1N1 flu epidemic --the China Flu Blues-- in 2009, lived there with her sinologist husband, Tony, and two young sons.  But, she writes,  "what happens while we’re there is that one of us gets cancer. It turns out to be me."

"The Foremost Good Fortune is just about as honest a book as you'll ever read," wrote the Washington Post. "The trip Conley went on was to a far more complex place that she envisioned. This is a beautiful book about China and cancer and how to be an authentic, courageous human being."

A former South End resident and native of Maine, Conley has taught creative writing and literature at Emerson College, Simmons College and within Harvard's Teachers as Writers Program.  She and her family have since returned to Portland, Maine, where she started a creative writing lab, The Telling Room. She is now working on another novel.

Boston Globe calls on BPL to reverse decision on Sunday Copley closing, also calls for branch closings

Globe Editorial

Elimination of Sunday hours shows deeper woes at library

March 31, 2011

SUNDAY HOURS at the main library in Copley Square are part of intellectual life in Boston, and Boston Public Library trustees’ recent vote to eliminate those hours is a blow to Boston bibliophiles, researchers, students, and city residents whose work and family schedules limit access during the rest of the week. The trustees should reverse the decision. That could mean trimming hours during less busy periods in the short term — either at Copley or at branches — and will certainly mean more far-reaching changes, such as modernizing the terms of labor contracts, in the future.

The main library accounts for more than half the foot traffic in the system, library officials say, and Sunday is the second-busiest day of the week at the main library. But like every city agency, the library system is struggling to maintain reliable levels of service during an economic downturn, and cutting Sunday hours come fall will save about $250,000 that might otherwise be carved out of, for instance, the book acquisition budget.

Last year, the trustees voted to close four branch libraries to address a budget shortfall of more than $3 million. “This isn’t where we want to be,’’ said library president Amy Ryan. But the library needs major changes in labor and library service policies to avoid stagnation and get itself on better footing. Even though the Copley library is busiest on weekends, labor contracts call for librarians and library aides who work on Sunday to receive overtime pay. Clearly, some library staffers should be working on straight-time Sunday-to-Thursday schedules.

More weekend hours would be helpful at neighborhood branches, too, but this can happen only if city negotiators persuade librarian unions to tailor branch hours to the needs of users. As it stands, the library system has a dearth of hours and a surfeit of buildings. The system doesn’t need 26 branches to function well, especially in the digital age. But last year’s vote of the trustees to close four branches was met not only with protests from patrons but an end run by state legislators who threatened to cut off all state aid to Boston’s library system unless the Menino administration backed off the closure plan. It only delayed the inevitable; eventually, some branches will need to close.

Despite voting for the Sunday closure at the iconic main library in Copley Square, trustee chairman Jeffrey Rudman called it a “civic tragedy.’’ More such tragedies will be circulating throughout the library system until library administrators succeed at paring branches and rewriting labor contracts.

© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.

BPL Patrons React to Proposed Sunday Closings

The Boston

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Globe today has an interesting article on the proposed closing of the BPL Central Branch on Sundays for the new fiscal year. From the article:

College students fleeing campus libraries, where chatty pals stand in the way of a polished term paper. City residents showing off a historic landmark to friends visiting from out of town. Job seekers down on their luck. They all come to the same place on Sunday afternoons from October to May — the central facility of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. But next fall, they may have to look elsewhere, after the library’s Board of Trustees approved a budget proposal last week that calls for closing the Copley library on Sundays, as part of a larger effort to keep neighborhood branches open and avoid layoffs. Read more

BPL Trustees Approve $39.34m Budget, Copley to Be Closed on Sundays

March 24, 2011

The Boston Public Library’s board of trustees approved a budget yesterday that would keep all 26 branches open, but shutter the central location in Copley Square on Sundays. Trustees voted 4 to 2 to accept the $39.34 million spending plan. It must still be approved by Mayor Thomas M. Menino and the City Council. Changes could also come from the state, which funds the library and has not finalized its own budget. The spending plan would avert layoffs and keep doors open at four branches that had been slated to close last year, a proposal the Menino administration abandoned in the face of neighborhood opposition.

© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.

Literary Speed Dating at Public Libraries Offers Dimmed Lights, Rose Petals and a Book to Fall Back On If the Match is Not Made in Heaven

In an effort to expand their patron base, library staff across the country have begun to offer speed-dating services at the library by turning their rooms into romantic venues at night for the between-20-and 40-year-old set. The age group that grew up with the Internet tends to stay away from the stacks unless they have kids, according to librarians quoted in a  New York Times article. Events have been held at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library, but also at the main library in Sacramento, CA,  Chattanooga, TN, Piscataway, N.J., Omaha, NE and Fort Collins, CO, where librarians strung white lights and scattered rose petals for two date nights last fall.

"Among the first of similar events in the United States took place at the Omaha Public Library Benson Branch, where Amy Mather, a librarian, and her colleague at the time, Manya Shorr, organized a “Hardbound to Heartbound” night in 2009, on Valentine’s Day. Some 65 people showed up" the Times reported.

Last spring the Collaborative Summer Library Program, a national consortium of public libraries, included literary speed dating on its list of suggested adult library programming. Since then, libraries across the country have been dimming the lights and playing matchmaker.

BPL Trustees to Meet Tomorrow, March 23rd, 8:30 AM, for Bi-Monthly Meeting at Copley Library

The BPL's trustees will meet for

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their regular bi-monthly meeting at Copley Library tomorrow morning, starting at 8:30 AM, in Rabb Lecture Hall. On the agenda are a discussion of the FY12 BPL recommended operational budget, an update on the Strategic Planning Committee's efforts to produce a coherent and informed plan by the end of this calendar year, and an opportunity for the public to comment.

Boston Phoenix Article Says State's Flood Preparedness for Libraries Leads the Nation

The wrenching process of dealing with loss of life and property as a result of the recent accumulation of disasters in Japan has barely begun but, at some point, the loss of libraries and their literary and cultural collections will enter the public's consciousness, too. This is why a recent article in the Boston Phoenix seems so timely. Called "When Your Library's Underwater, Who You Gonna Call?" by Eugenia Williamson, it describes the preparedness, and lack thereof, of libraries in general and in Massachusetts, in particular. "In 1996, a public library in Western Massachusetts burned to the ground" she writes.  In 1998, a 42-inch water main broke in Copley Square, causing $18 million of damage to the Boston Public Library, wiping out all of their government documents and science reference books."

But now "Massachusetts cultural institutions lead the nation in emergency response"  because of these few hard lessons, the article says.

In January of 2011,  the Atheneum Library in Boston experienced a water emergency when " a sprinkler pipe broke in the ceiling of the first floor of the Boston Athenaeum" and "water rained from the ceiling in a great gush, splashing early American portraits, antique wooden furniture, oriental rugs — and patrons, who were ordered out of the building and onto the freezing street. Within an hour, a good part of the first floor was covered in four inches of standing water. The water cascaded down the stairwell and the elevator shaft, seeping into the basement and the sub-basement, which house 50,000 books in a collection dating back to the early 19th century."

But "mere hours after the pipe burst, the water was gone, the books were stable, and the building was dry. Thanks to planning, everyone was out of there by midnight."

Library Board Trustees Byron Rushing and Paul LaCamera Laying the Groundwork for a BPL Overhaul and Future Fundraising Campaign

After more than a year's effort to counter public anger over threatened library closures and cutbacks, two of the newer appointments to the Library Board, State Representative Byrton Rushing and former WBUR General Manager Paul LaCamera, have begun laying the groundwork for a major library overhaul and the restructuring of the fundraising arm for the Boston Public Library.  Trustee Rushing agreed this month to head the Strategic Planning Committee of the BPL's so-called Compass project, a once-feeble but now more solid effort to engage the public in envisioning the library's future, while trustee LaCamera's search committee is down to the final phase of finding someone to  lead the limping Boston Public Library Foundation. Together with recent efforts by the Library Board to make the institution more transparent and responsive to Friends' groups, employees and the public at large, it appears a new and better day may finally be dawning at the the BPL, once the envy of the nation as its first public library, now among the weakest of modern metropolitan library systems.

It will be a hard slog, and many things can go wrong. But the quality of involvement by trustees Rushing and LaCamera on the critical fundraising and strategic planning committees may spell the difference between success and failure: top-notch fundraising can't be done without a top-notch strategic  plan, and vice versa.If LaCamera's development background at both Channel 5 and WBUR can link up fortuitously with the strategically skilled  Rushing's profound understanding of and commitment to the role of public libraries in a democracy,  many good things could become possible. That sort of power and savvy is about what it will take to overhaul the BPL, an institution steeped in unfortunate and unnecessarily hostile relationships between management, unions and employees as well as long-standing resource inequity between the Central Library in the Back Bay (20,000 residents) and its 26 branches in the 'hoods,' where the remaining 580,ooo or so Bostonians live.

"The support of the mayor is critical," agreed LaCamera in response to a question from the audience during a March 8 trustees meeting at the Charlestown Branch Library. Asked for an update by another library patron from Roslindale, LaCamera explained that raising serious money requires a team of highly trained professionals with very specific skills who, in the case of the BPL, have to build an organization from the ground up. The Foundation has been without a head since its (volunteer) president left last year. According to Dan Currie, a library advocate from Dorchester who attended a subsequent BPL budget meeting on March 16, trustee LaCamera reiterated at that time again that while "serious efforts" were underway regarding fundraising and staffing the BPL Foundation, there would be no "magic bullet," and that there would be "two or three years of effort" before a reinvigorated foundation might be able to create a "meaningful" fundraising impact.

Trustee Rushing presented an upbeat vision to produce a strategic plan by the last trustees meeting of 2011 "if  we all stay involved."  He added, "and I mean all the stakeholders at any level of the city." Rep. Rushing reminded the audience he had "a day job,"  but that Michael Colford, the Research Services and Information Technology director at the Compass project, would be in charge to organize the (high-paced) schedule of public meetings on strategic planning, to be made available on the BPL web site sometime this week. Holding up a colorful copy of the new Seattle Public Library Strategic Plan, Colford said this was one of several the committee would study. Previously, considering other US libraries' innovations and plans was looked upon askance by the BPL, and usually disimissed without much ado..

Colford said in a subsequent conversation that the public would be involved in at least three ways: at 3 or 4 to-be-scheduled committee meetings; at the bi-monthly public trustee meetings where the committee will report to the trustees and the public will have time to comment; and at 4 to 6 to-be-scheduled public meetings where updates will be provided and comments solicited. Colford would also "look into" re-activating a public-comment section on the BPL’s Compass site where suggestions, relevant library reports on strategic planning and related materials could be posted.

Stay tuned...