The recently relocated Kirstein Business Library in Copley Square lacks the historical charm of the former stand-alone site near Old City Hall, where investors and local business owners had been coming since the Great Depression. But the Kirstein’s new home in the basement of the Boston Public Library’s main branch is roomier, open more hours, and about $250,000 cheaper to operate annually. It is already a model of how public agencies can do more on tight budgets.
Unlike some Boston department heads, library system president Amy Ryan is enthusiastic about finding ways to provide good service amid municipal budget cuts. On the job for a year, Ryan already anticipates that Boston’s $40 million annual library budget will drop by $2 million in fiscal year 2011. She’s not whining, though, pledging instead to become “more nimble.’’ She hopes to expand the use of volunteers, which could rile her unionized workforce. The library is already designing a system that will allow patrons to check out their own items from the reserves shelves. And she wants to expand weekend hours, which could mean that all or some of the system’s 27 neighborhood libraries might be closed on a weekday in the future.
Ryan’s can-do Midwestern style - she used to run a large Minneapolis-area library system - is playing well in Boston. Over the summer, she unearthed some of the “treasures of the BPL’’ collection and put them on display in the main library’s Johnson wing. Nothing, artistically, ties together the illuminated manuscript of Christmas music from the 15th century, a 19th-century Winslow Homer etching showing naval officers taking a navigational reading in high seas, or an MIT professor’s 1964 stroboscopic photo of a bullet ripping through an apple. But a theme is developing: For short money, Ryan can open the library’s vaults and give patrons something important or enjoyable to ponder.
