Boston Public Library To Close Business Library, Move Functions to Central
Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 3/24/2009
- Kirstein Branch opened in 1930
- Effort will help save $4 million
- Business library will have more hours at Central
In an effort to help save $4 million—nearly ten percent of the budget—the Boston Public Library (BPL) will 
close the Kirstein Business Branch, which opened in 1930 and has four floors with 4600 square feet of public space, and move its functions to the Central Library, where it will occupy a larger space on a single floor.
The move will occur no earlier than July 1, the beginning of the next fiscal year, Mary Frances O’Brien, BPL’s manager of Central Library Services, told LJ. “Kirstein will maintain its integrity as a business research facility, it’s just going to be housed in a different place, with greater staffing efficiencies,” she said. The single space in a larger building will allow for evening and weekend hours.
Currently, six librarians and three support staffers work at Kirstein. Because of ongoing union negotiations, O’Brien said she could not estimate BPL staffing patterns in the next fiscal year, but “we will have adequate staff to provide the same level of service.”
Changing patterns of use
Kirstein was the first public business library in the United States to be built as a gift of a businessman (Louis Kirstein) and the second to be built specifically as a public business library. Housed in the city’s old Financial D
istrict, it has received fewer visitors in the past decade, though it is still used by small business owners, investors, and law firms.
“This is not an easy decision,” O’Brien said, pointing to "not only a changing economic environment, but a changing library services landscape.” In-person reference questions at Kirstein spiked in 1995-96, she said, and have since been cut in half. Telephone reference questions have declined, while questions via email or the Internet have gone up.
Other savings
What will happen to the city-owned building? As of now, O'Brien said, it would be mothballed.
BPL, she said, also is looking at efficiencies in technical services, consolidating services on its special collections floor, and reducing service 16 hours a week in the Music and Fine Arts departments at the central library.
