ARCHIVES OF LEAD STORIES
March 17, 2005
Library trust distributes funds for programming
Jeremy Schwab
Caribbean storyteller Derek Burrows and musician David
Polansky enchanted an audience of almost 200 elementary school
students at the Dudley Branch Library in Roxbury one evening last
week with folk tales starring animals and funny stories punctuated
by music.
The celebration marked a new series of classes where parents will
work with instructors to improve their children’s reading
skills and learn pedagogy so they can more effectively teach their
kids at home. The new course — Raising Readers and
Writers — is part of a community-driven campaign to bring
more visitors and programming to the library.
The Friends of the Dudley Library, a community-based volunteer
group that works to improve the branch, launched the campaign
after the Boston Public Library’s Board of Trustees voted
in 2003 to pay the branch’s entire fiscal 2004 operating
costs out of a trust fund that is supposed to be used for “literary
instruction purposes” at the branch. The money from the
Fellowes Athenaeum Fund was used to pay all the branch’s
salaries, heating and utilities, expenses the city routinely pays
for at every public library in Boston.
While the use of $508,000 from the trust fund helped the BPL avert
a budget crisis, the move enraged neighborhood activists and District
7 City Councilor Chuck Turner, who demanded the city return the
money to the fund.
The branch library’s supporters have thus far failed to
convince the city to reimburse the money, but they have succeeded
in pressuring BPL President Bernard Margolis to promise not to
use the fund again to pay the branch’s major operating costs.
Furthermore, the shock of seeing the BPL trustees deplete the
accrued interest from the fund motivated supporters of the Dudley
Library to come up with a long-range plan for the use of the fund.
“Before this came along, I don’t think people paid
a lot of attention to how the money was used,” said Friends
of the Dudley Library President Pauline Coulter, who ascended
to her post last year. “I think when this thing came about,
people started taking more interest in what is going on.”
In conjunction with the city, the Friends of the Dudley Library
formed an advisory committee last year to guide the use of the
Fellowes Athenaeum Fund.
In addition to Raising Readers and Writers, to be administered
by Northeastern University and the St. James Education Center,
the advisory committee came up with a plan to offer grants this
spring of $1,500 to $5,000 from the fund, for a total of $10,000,
to groups to increase awareness of Roxbury’s history.
“We’re inviting clubs and organizations in the community
to get seed money for traveling exhibits — maybe videos
or something more creative so children can learn about the strengths
of Roxbury,” said Loretta Williams, who works with the Friends
of the Dudley Library. “The Friends want to work with networks
in Roxbury to teach about the real history of Roxbury and people,
maybe seniors, who can talk about Roxbury before it got labeled
by the mainstream as a place of gangs and drugs.”
The grant for Raising Readers and Writers is $45,000. On March
1, the Friends of the Dudley Library recommended that the BPL
trustees use $163,000 from the fund for the coming year, including
some money to strengthen the history and Raising Readers and Writers
programs. At its April 5 meeting, the Fellowes Athenaeum Trust
Fund Advisory Committee will discuss those recommendations and
approve or reject them.
Back
to Lead Story Archives
Home
Page
