Library lacks means to repair old tomes

Deep within the labyrinthine shelves, stacks, and corridors of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square is a small room that the staff calls the ``book hospital." It's a place where spines are replaced, broken parts are mended, and aging is reversed.

It's also a place with a staggering waiting list: a 16th-century Hebrew scroll written on animal skin parchment, badly damaged bindings on John James Audubon's famous 1841 miniature ``Birds of America," and a book of New England algae specimens from 1857.

But at this hospital, where the ailments vary widely from patient to patient, there aren't enough ``book doctors," or enough funds, to halt the steady deterioration of one of the world's finest collections of rare books and manuscripts.

If money isn't raised soon and consistently in coming years, the library can expect significant losses of its rare and historic treasures beginning within five years, said Vivian Spiro, chairwoman of the Associates of the Boston Public Library. ``We need to prevent this. It would be criminal if it happened."

The immediate prospects are not encouraging. The library's conservation budget has remained flat; what once was a seven-person conservator staff has been slashed to two; and a preservation fund created by the associates, a community-based organization, has raised a small fraction of what Spiro said is a $6 million endowment goal to pursue conservation over the long term.

In the meantime, the staff frets over which books to repair first.

``How do you do the triage and say one book is more important than another book?" said Bernard Margolis, the library president.

The library's 15th-century Gutenberg dictionary was an obvious candidate. The cost to clean, rebind, and repair the pages of one of the first dictionaries printed with moveable type: $15,000.

``How many books can we afford to give this kind of treatment to?" Margolis asked.

The dictionary, the only one of its kind in the United States, is priceless. Other items, such as a scrolled plea from Scottish churches to abolish American slavery, could fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction, but must wait its turn on a long list of repair priorities.

``Some people would say to us: `Why is it important?' " said Margolis, pointing to the scroll. ``It matters because it is recorded history."

The library has 1.7 million rare books and manuscripts among its 34 million items. Its operating budget of $42.9 million for fiscal 2007 allocates $93,000 for conservation, not including salaries of the two full-time employees in its conservation lab.

By contrast, the Boston Athenaeum, a private institution with 600,000 volumes, has two full-time and three part-time employees in conservation. The New York Public Library, a privately managed nonprofit organization that serves the City of New York, has 35 full-time employees in the preservation division, which is endowed. The library has 50 million items in its collection. And at the Library of Congress, which holds 132 million items, 86 full-time employees work in preservation.

``It takes a very far-sighted administration to do conservation because, basically, you're solving problems for your successors," said James Reid-Cunningham, chief conservator at the Athenaeum. ``A collection the size of the Boston Public Library is colossal. If they had twice the staff, they'd still be behind the 8-ball."

The Boston Public Library's rare-book shelves also contain irreplaceable records that date from Boston's founding in 1630. There, inside rotting book bindings and drab folders, are selectmen's minutes from Colonial times and correspondence from Samuel Adams.

There are real-estate transactions and Town Meeting votes. There is a handwritten acknowledgment by Boston officials of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And one piece of correspondence, penned shortly after the Boston Massacre in 1770, offers this thought: ``Nothing can rationally be expected to restore the peace of the town and prevent blood and carnage but the immediate removal of the troops."

Some of the Boston records have never been studied by scholars, said Earle Havens, the library's acting Keeper of Rare Books and Manuscripts. Many of them are brittle, decaying, and in need of attention.

``They are falling apart," he said.

David McCullough, who used the Boston Public Library to research his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of John Adams, assailed the lack of funding for major, ongoing preservation. McCullough spoke Sept. 20 at a dinner at the library that raised $110,000 for a preservation fund established in his name in 2001.

``These books are a national treasure, which we of the Boston community are duty-bound to preserve," McCullough said. ``Yes, it will be very expensive to do that, but it's a fraction of what those treasures are worth.

``If we were the custodians of a great painting or an important building, or of the original text of a great dramatist's masterpiece, we would, of course, save them."

An exhibit at the library, ``John Adams Unbound," displays the second president's 3,800 books that are part of the library's collection. Some of the volumes were repaired last month . But since work is needed throughout the rare-book collection, the McCullough fund can be tapped only for the most pressing projects, Spiro said.

``We have been doing conservation piecemeal. We've been eating our seed corn, so to say, and are at a few hundred thousand dollars, despite our good efforts," Spiro said.

Beth Prindle, curator of the John Adams collection, said an answer must be found.

``We have our responsibility to the public today, but we also have our responsibility to the public tomorrow," she said.