The fight to save a branch library begins in the pouring rain

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If BPL President Amy Ryan stays, will she turn the remaining branches into Internet cafe's?

What does this "transformation" Menino and Ryan are talking about look like?

The BPL board of Trustees voted 5-0 to close branches.

You can email the Chairman of the Board to tell him you disagree with the decision and why. 1. It's not the money, it's the priorities. 2. The alleged metrics used to decide which branches to close seems to be a disingenuous smokescreen. 3. If it was once a good plan to open the branch then what reason explains why it is a good decision to close it? 4. BPL should not be building internet cafes but keeping libraries open for the young and the old and everyone in between. 5. Demand level funding for BPL operations from City Government and the people of the city of Boston will back you up.

Boston Public Library
Board of Trustees
Jeffrey B. Rudman
click for Internet e-mail address

Jeffrey B. Rudman is a senior partner at the Boston law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, where he co-chairs the Securities Department. He is a nationally recognized authority on defending shareholder class actions and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations. Mr. Rudman lectures on shareholder litigation and corporate governance for such organizations as American International Group, NASDAQ and the National Investor Relations Institute, among others. He has been listed in every edition of The Best Lawyers in America.

Mr. Rudman is dedicated to supporting the community and has served many charitable institutions. During the 1990s, Mr. Rudman served as a director of the Boston Public Library Foundation and helped lead the effort to restore the McKim Building. He is a member of the board of the Boston Museum Project and is the secretary of the New England Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee. Mr. Rudman is a past member of the Community Advisory Board at WGBH and former trustee of the Buckingham Browne & Nichols School. He presently belongs to the St. Botolph Club and the Bretton Woods Committee.

A graduate of Columbia College and Harvard Law School, where he won the Ames Moot Court Competition, Mr. Rudman spent two years as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, taking a First in the Honours School of Modern History.

Mr. Rudman is a resident of Charlestown where, together with his wife and two sons, he has lived for almost two decades.

Boston Public Library
Board of Trustees
Berthé M. Gaines

Appointed to the position in 1984 and reappointed in 1990, Berthé M. Gaines is the first African-American woman to serve as a trustee of the Boston Public Library and only the fourth woman to serve in the history of the Library, which was established in 1848. Her appointment followed a time of fiscal crisis for the city (1981-1984) when she was actively involved in SAVE OUR LIBRARIES, a citywide multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural group of men and women committed to keeping neighborhood libraries open. In 1990, Mrs. Gaines served as the first female president of the Board of Trustees and in 1999, Mrs. Gaines received an Honorary Doctorate from Simmons College, Boston, MA.

Boston Public Library
Board of Trustees
James Carroll

James Carroll was born in Chicago in 1943, and raised in Washington where his father, an Air Force general, served as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Carroll attended Georgetown University before entering the seminary to train for the Catholic priesthood. He received BA and MA degrees from St. Paul’s College, the Paulist Fathers’ seminary in Washington, and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1969. Carroll served as Catholic Chaplain at Boston University from 1969 to 1974 and then left the priesthood to become a writer.

In 1974 Carroll was Playwright-in-Residence at the Berkshire Theater Festival in Stockbridge, MA. In 1976 he published his first novel, Madonna Red, which was translated into seven languages. Since then he has published nine additional novels, including the NewYorkTimes bestsellers Mortal Friends (1978), Family Trade (1982), and Prince of Peace (1984). His novels The City Below (1994) and Secret Father (2003) were named Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times. Carroll’s essays and articles have appeared in The NewYorker, Daedalus, and other publications. His op-ed page column has run weekly in the Boston Globe since 1992.

Carroll’s memoir, An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War thatCameBetween Us, received the 1996 National Book Award in nonfiction and other awards. His book Constantine’s Sword: The Churchand the Jews: A History, published in 2001, was a New York Times bestseller and was honored as one of the Best Books of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and others. It was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, and won the Melcher Book Award, the James Parks Morton Interfaith Award, and National Jewish Book Award in History. Responding to the Catholic sex abuse crisis in 2002, Carroll published Toward A New Catholic Church: The Promise ofReform. In 2004 he published Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War, adapted from his Boston Globe columns since 9/11. In May 2005, he published House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power, a history of the Pentagon, which the Chicago Tribune called “the first great non-fiction book of the new millennium.”

Carroll is a regular participant in on-going Jewish-Christian-Muslim encounters at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Carroll is a member of the Council of PEN-New England, which he chaired for four years. He has been a Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at the Harvard Divinity School. He is a trustee of the Boston Public Library, a member of the Advisory Board of the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis University, and a member of the Dean’s Council at the Harvard Divinity School. Carroll is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University.

James Carroll lives in Boston with his wife, the novelist Alexandra Marshall. They have two grown children.

Boston Public Library
Board of Trustees
Paul A. La Camera

Paul La Camera was appointed General Manager of WBUR in October, 2005. WBUR, licensed to Boston University, includes WBUR-FM, Boston; WBUR-AM, West Yarmouth; and wbur.org.

WBUR-FM is Boston’s NPR news station and one of the nation’s premier National Public Radio affiliates. Several programs that air on NPR stations across the country are produced at the WBUR studios on the Boston University campus, including “On Point” with Tom Ashbrook; “Here and Now” with Robin Young; “Only a Game” with Bill Littlefield; and “Car Talk” with the inimitable Tappet Brothers, Click and Clack.

Previously La Camera served for more than 33 years at WCVB-TV, Boston’s ABC affiliate, including 12 years as President and General Manager. WCVB is Boston’s leading local station and is widely considered to be among America’s best commercial television stations. La Camera hails from a family steeped in media. For 30 years, his late father Anthony La Camera was the distinguished dean of American television critics, writing for the Hearst-owned Boston newspapers.

Prior to joining WCVB, Paul La Camera was Director of Communications for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and worked as a reporter for the Boston Record American and Sunday Advertiser.

Among his television industry activities, La Camera served on the White House Advisory Committee (Gore Commission) on Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. He has testified on local television issues before both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the U.S. House Telecommunications Subcommittee.

In addition to serving on the Boston Public Library's Board of Trustees, La Camera is a board member of the Boston Foundation, the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. He was recently appointed a trustee of the Boston Public Library.

La Camera is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross, where he serves as a trustee. He has three master’s degrees: Masters in Journalism and Urban Studies from Boston University, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Boston College. He was honored in 1992 as a distinguished alumnus of BU’s College of Communications and in 2000 with the Sanctae Crucis Alumnus Award from his college alma mater. La Camera has received honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Massachusetts (Medical School) and from Boston’s Emmanuel College.

A native of the Boston suburb of Winthrop, he resides in Boston with his wife Mimi. They have three adult sons: Mark, Peter and Christopher. Mimi is President of Boston’s Freedom Trail Foundation.

Board of Trustees
Evelyn Arana-Ortiz

Evelyn Arana-Ortiz was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico and arrived Boston in 1990 where she joined IDX Systems Corporation, a healthcare software systems organization for large academic medical facilities and hospitals. In 2004, she was selected to oversee and lead various software implementation projects for what was considered the largest information technology implementation in Europe, the electronic patient record for the British National Health Service. She currently works at GE Healthcare as a Senior Implementations Project Manager for large hospitals and medical facilities.

She graduated from the University of Puerto Rico with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration with a major in Information Systems and later completed a Masters of Science in Management from Lesley University, Cambridge , MA.

Mrs. Arana-Ortiz commitment to serve the community awarded her the appointment to join the Boston GE Hispanic Forum leadership team, responsible for attracting, retaining, and training Hispanic talent as well as organize and lead community service activities in the Boston area. She also serves in the Executive Board of 826Boston, a nonprofit organization dedicated to support students ages 6-18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

Mrs. Arana-Ortiz is a resident of West Roxbury where she lives with her husband Jose A. Ortiz and two daughters.

Boston Public Library
Board of Trustees
Zamawa Arenas

Emmy award-winner Zamawa Arenas is Principal of ARGUS, the only Latino-owned advertising agency located in Boston specializing in multicultural marketing. As an ARGUS Principal, Zamawa directs the client service teams, and is responsible for strategy and planning work for agency clients. Her experience in marketing communications benefits from 16 plus years in the industry, including public relations, broadcast media management, and internet development.

Zamawa began her career in her native Venezuela as a newspaper journalist and turned public relations manager for the National Association of Graphic Arts. Still searching for her niche, she turned to cable television and worked her way up to programming and promotions director for a cable network of three channels. In 1994, Zamawa moved to Boston to pursue graduate studies at Boston University. After obtaining her master’s degree, she saw potential in the then-emerging Internet sector and started an online media company with two associates. After the company launched, Zamawa decided to move on and joined ARGUS founder Lucas Guerra to reposition the agency from a graphic design firm to a full-service marketing firm in 1997.

Zamawa currently serves on the boards of several organizations, including the Boston Children’s Chorus, Children’s Hospital Boston Community Partnership, the Commonwealth Institute’s Women of Ethnic Diversity Initiative, One Family and the WGBH Corporate Executive Council. Most recently, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino named Zamawa as the newest appointment to the Boston Public Library Board of Trustees.
Zamawa is a recipient of the 2005 Pinnacle Award from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and was named a 2005 Leading Woman by the Girl Scouts Patriots’ Trail Council. She also is a 2006 Give Liberty a Hand award recipient from the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. In addition, Zamawa was inducted into the 2006 YWCA – Academy of Women Achievers.

Boston Public Library
Board of Trustees
Donna M. DePrisco

Ms. Donna M. DePrisco is a business woman affiliated with DePrisco Jewelers with stores in Boston, Wellesley and Osterville, Massachusetts.

What's going on in the Kirstein Library's old building on City Hall Avenue?...

How to Close the Digital Divide? Fund Public Libraries
By Donna C. Celano & Susan B. Neuman
Education Week

Tough times call for tough measures. And for the nation’s public libraries, times could not be tougher. When it comes to balancing city budgets, local libraries are often one of the first institutions to feel the heat. In Philadelphia in 2008, Mayor Michael Nutter became the center of controversy when he proposed closing 11 libraries, nearly all in poor neighborhoods, to bring the budget into line. And library budgets have faced the chopping block this year in cities in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and other states.

While this course of action may seem to be a quick fix to a city’s economic woes, closing libraries renders a crushing blow to the nation’s neediest children. Not only does it shut off their access to books and other printed materials that promote literacy, but it also has another serious side effect:... read more