The Boston Public Library is at a crossroads. Longtime Director Bernard Margolis was removed in November — apparently having incurred the personal wrath of Mayor Thomas Menino, who appoints and controls the library’s Board of Trustees. Once out the door Mr. Margolis went public with accusations that the mayor, through his underlings, had forced the library to hire his less than qualified political supporters.

Then, on Dec. 5, William O. Taylor, former publisher of The Boston Globe, and a former 16-year library trustee, wrote a thoughtful op-ed piece in his former newspaper. He called for the famously beautiful main branch in Copley Square to be turned over to a nonprofit corporation, leaving the city to run the 27 local branches.

Mayor Menino, who is halfway through his fourth full term in office, has a rich reputation for bullying his senior department heads. He has indeed put political supporters on the payroll, both at the main library and the neighborhood branches. More ominously, favored companies have had a way of being awarded contracts. For example, Valley Communications Systems, of Chicopee, Mass., seems to have had the inside track for installing sound systems at the library.

For his part, former director Margolis had a reputation of being an unengaged manager with less than perfect people skills. Under his leadership, the main branch has grown a bit seedy, and the BPL’s Web site is second rate. While the branches are generally in a state of good repair, Mr. Margolis remained a stranger to branch staff.

Mr. Taylor’s proposal acknowledges these conflicts and problems tactfully — that is to say, without mentioning them. He obviously wants to insulate a great institution from petty politics, and to elevate it to the level of the New York Public Library, where it belongs, and indeed, once was.

The branches sustain Boston’s hope for the future. Every time one reads of a fatal shooting of a teenager in a poor Boston neighborhood, one may, if one wishes, enter a library branch on an afternoon or early evening. There, one will find boys and girls quietly doing their homework — watched over by library staff with all the care we must imagine a mother whooping crane or ivory billed woodpecker guards its eggs.

This is precious and every bit as important as returning the main branch to its rightful glory. At a moral level it is more important. Restoring the main branch could theoretically be postponed for five or ten years, though it shouldn’t be. Deprive boys and girls of their branch library for five or ten years and they may be lost to the streets forever.