After Ouster Vote, Boston PL’s Margolis Lashes Back at City Mayor
Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 11/14/2007
After getting the official word yesterday that his contract wouldn’t be renewed, Boston Public Library President Bernard Margolis forcefully criticized Mayor Thomas Menino, calling the mayor an authoritarian who refused to fund the city's 27 branches and also regularly interfered with library operations. Margolis told the Boston Globe that he so feared the city would sell library treasures that he got state legislation passed last year to protect against such sales. Menino aides, in response, said that Margolis favored BPL’s central library over the branches and exhibited “hubris and entitlement.”Even though library services have grown during Margolis's decade-long tenure, city funding, the Globe noted, has increased from $28.1 million to $28.8 million since 2000, while full-time staff positions have been slashed from 603 in 2002 to 483 in 2007—and with only four of those positions at the branches.
