WBUR reports on work to add a BPL branch to the China Trade Center, 60 years after Chinatown lost its library to make way for the Central Artery.

Photo from the BPL. Posted under this Creative Commons license.

Not long after the Johnson wing of the BPL's main library went up, the story goes, an old lady became forever trapped in the stairs that were the only way to get between the new and old wings. The new renovations have finally fixed that.

UPDATE: When I originally posted this, I thought this was just one of those urban legends. But it turns out an elderly woman actually did die in a BPL corridor, although not one connecting the two wings, in 1977.

Alex Green can't say enough about the new non-dungeony insides:

A literary culture thrives on readers, and while our city has never lacked for those, it has gone long stretches with little in the way of public spaces in which they might feel inspired to gather. The Boston Public Library’s newly renovated Johnson building, which opened on July 9, so successfully embraces and celebrates the idea of being a literary public space that it has the potential to fill that absence for good.

The Boston Public Library's board of trustees today offered the president's job to the man who's been running the BPL system since the last permanent president left.

David Leonard accepted the job, the week after the trustees' first choice decided not to leave San Jose, CA. Read more.

The Boston Public Library board of trustees today voted to ask Jill Bourne, currently city librarian for San Jose, CA, to fill the vacancy created when Amy Ryan resigned last year.

Bourne had served as head of the 23-branch San Jose system for almost three years. She previously spent almost seven years as deputy city librarian in San Francisco. Read more.

One of the officers suffered a leg injury during the incident, around noon in the McKim wing.

Louise Miller watched the changing display on the Dartmouth Street side of the Copley Square main library tonight.

Sophia enjoyed the show: Read more.

Mayor Walsh's office announced today that Bob Gallery,president of Bank of America Massachusetts is the Boston Public Library's new trustees chairman.

Gallery replaces Jeffrey Rudman, who resigned this summer in the midst of the missing-prints brouhaha.

The case of the missing prints also forced the resignation of BPL President Amy Ryan; BPL is in the midst of preparing a search for a new library president.

Along with Gallery's appointment, the mayor's office also announced the appointment of Cheryl Cronin, a partner at Cronin & Leonard LLP, to the BPL board of trustees.