Even without funding cuts, the Boston Public Library might still cut branches, chairman says

The youngest library supporter: Paul Facklam, 4, and his dad
opposed the closing of the Roslindale branch

#bpl2010 - Twitter comments.

Addressing an angry if generally polite crowd of several hundred people at a budget hearing today, BPL trustees Chairman Jeffrey Rudman said that even in an ideal world, the nation's oldest public-library system simply has too many competing demands to address.

And this is far from an ideal world, Rudman said: The BPL faces a $3.6 million deficit in the coming fiscal year. "The arithmetic is the arithmetic, you can't do very much with it," he said.

Rudman emphasized at the outside of the hearing, held at the Copley main branch, that no decisions on branch closings would be made today.

Users of branch libraries rose to support their branches - and to object to being forced to fight against other residents.

Don Haber, co-chairman of Friends of the Jamaica Plain Library, said his group has collected 1,500 signatures on petitions to keep the branch open. He said it is unfair his branch is "very likely on the chopping block" because the city refused repeated requests to make the branch handicap-accessible.

"Boston is still a city of turfs," Sarah-Ann Shaw, president of Friends of the Dudley Branch Library, said. "If you decided to close certain branches and leave others open, it will be a mess in this city."

One resident after another rose to declare branches joyous learning centers for little kids, safe havens for teens, community gathering places for adults. Many declared books are far from dead and joined trustee John Carroll in calling them more important now than ever. Elizabeth Buckley, a patron of the Faneuil branch in Oak Square, declared her branch "the cultural and intellectual center of the community." Charles Levin declared "It is outrageous it has come to this. In times of economic crisis, libraries are needed most."

BPL President Amy Ryan said the current crisis provides an opportunity to refashion the BPL system for the digital generation. She said the system needs to do a better job putting resources where the demands are. And increasingly, she said, that means online. "Libraries have never been more important or useful than they are today. Now we are information navigators, helping sort through millions of hits from the Internet."

Ryan said that if bpl.org were a branch, it would be the sixth largest in the city. "We can't take a car designed in the 1970s onto today's information superhighway," she said.

But Carroll said he was deeply disturbed to hear the BPL has already cut its budget for acquiring books, CDs and DVDs. One of the BPL's most historic and fundamental roles is to ensure patrons can have access to any imnportant book in the English language. "Books matter to the library more now than ever," he said.

BPL Trustee Paul LaCamera said he has been busy of late meeting with state legislators to try to press the case that the legislature should, at worst, level fund library asssistance, rather than cutting it. He urged the several hundred people in the hall to write their own legislators.

One resident wondered why the BPL didn't just sell off all the stuff it has stashed in the main branch that it never displays. Rudman said the library has actually "decommissioned" some stuff - it recently sold 250,000 wax phonograph records to the Library of Congress - but said it might not be worth the effort. In the past, the BPL often accepted gifts "in perpetuity," which means selling it would involve considerable legal discussions (he said the library now insists that anybody who wants to give such a gift also has to provide money to take care of the item).

And battles over what to sell would dwarf the discussions over branch closings, he said: "Would you like us to hawk the Gutenberg Bible in New York? I don't think so."

Although a number of city councilors attended the hearing, none spoke. Council President Mike Ross was the first to a microphone, but he was shouted down by residents who said they knew the councilors all supported the library and they wanted to hear from other residents first. Faced with a near revolt, Rudman agreed to let the non-pols go first. Ross did post a copy of the remarks he'd planned to make.