The Boston Globe Reports on The city closed last fall on the $8.5 million purchase of a building in West Roxbury at 201 Rivermoor St., a large warehouse-type structure near Millennium Park and West Roxbury High. The building, formerly owned by KeySpan Energy, would house all of the city’s tax documents and student records dating back to 1822.
To be called the Boston Heritage Center, the repository would be a home for the thousands of books and newspapers kept by the Boston Public Library in storage areas shared by the city archives. The facility, to be occupied later this year, would house a reading room, exhibit areas, and an area for public meetings, said John McColgan, the city’s deputy archivist.
Stenographic machine output. Boston City Council.
Stenographic machine output transcribed by Boston City Council public stenographers [email protected] [email protected] E.M. Fritch Associates court reporters emfritch at aol.com and efritch at aol.com is not preserved. Vendors to our city for stenographic services have failed to be responsible for preserving the public records.
This valuable record of council debate is a public record.
The http://cityofboston.gov/citycouncil/ overedited minutes from the stenographic machine output is not understandable for most citizens. The too brief minutes do not have indexing or cross references for the docket numbers or dates.
Records management practices, archival practices for Boston City Council and Boston City Clerk R. Salerno need to be looked at intelligently. In general Boston City Hall is unwilling to observe the spirit of FOI freedom of information sunshine open government and good records management, archival practices.
Boston Public Library’s President Bernie Margolis and BPL http://bpl.org/research/govdocs/local.htm Government Documents Curator G. Fithian should be advocates in the matter but like our Boston City Clerk are in denial about the failure to preserve what could be preserved by routine transmittal to our public library.