Trustees of the Public Library of the City Of Boston meeting

A. Welcome Remarks 

B. Roll Call 

C. Review and Approval of Meeting Minutes from November 9, 2021. 

A. CollectionSpace    

Beth Prindle, Head of Special Collections & Kurt Mansperger, BPL Consultant 

 VOTED:   “that, the Trustees Finance and Audit Committee of the Public Library of the City of Boston approve a contract not to exceed Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars and Zero Cents ($25,000) to be entered into with CollectionSpace, located at Lyrasis, 1438 West Peachtree Street, NW Suite 150, Atlanta, GA 30309​ for a crowdsourced software program used by museums to manage collections.  There will be on-going annual fee of $9000 for hosting costs.” 

B. Content Conversion Services 

Michael Colford, Director of Library Services 

 VOTED:   “that, the Trustees Finance and Audit Committee of the Public Library of the City of Boston approve a contract for Fifty Thousand Dollars and Zero Cents ($50,000) to be entered into with CCS, Weidestr. 134 22083 Hamburg, Germany, to conduct a pilot program in the post-processing of newspaper images digitized from certain Boston neighborhood newspapers from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s.   The purpose of this project is to make these images searchable and to allow the images to be ingested into both the Digital Commonwealth and Library of Congress’ newspaper repository.” 

C. Hepzibah Rapoport Consulting 

Beth Prindle, Head of Special Collections 

 VOTED:   “that, the Trustees Finance and Audit Committee Recommend the Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston vote to approve a contract not to exceed One Hundred Ninety-Nine Thousand Six Hundred Forty Dollars and Zero Cents ($199,640) with Hepzibah Rapoport Consulting, 34 Belmont St, Apt 2, Somerville, MA  02144.  They were the most responsive and responsible bidder in a public Request for Proposal (RFP) process, advertised under M.G.L. 30B, a contract for as specified for two years with the BPL to serve as project consultant to develop, implement, and oversee completion of a major initiative to clean, inventory, catalog, store, and provide access to hundreds of thousands of the library’s most significant research holdings. The Boston Public Library Evaluation Committee performed an evaluation of the proposals submitted by the vendors as described in the RFP documents, and through this process determined the proposal presented by:  Hepzibah Rapoport Consulting represented the best value for the Boston Public Library.” 

“Please sign up for public comment the first 30 minutes of the meeting to support effective time management.  On occasion, additional public comments on matters formally on the agenda may be allowed at the discretion of the Chair, and time allowing.  Members of the public are also reminded that comments may alternatively be submitted in writing to the Clerk of the Board for distribution to the Trustees.” 

Next meeting is Tuesday, March 8, 2022, at 8:30 a.m. via Zoom 

Meeting is subject to change