[GreenYes] EPA Closing Headquarters Library

[Gary Liss <gary@no.address>]

>From: "Stephanie Barger" <stephanie.barger@no.address>
>To: "'Gary Liss'" <gary@no.address>
>Subject: FW: EPA Closing Headquarters Library, ENS 9-22-06
>Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2006 16:11:03 -0700
>Organization: Earth Resource Foundation
>
>This should alarm EVERYONE!!!
>Kurt
>
>EPA Closing Headquarters Library
>
>WASHINGTON, DC, September 22, 2006 (ENS) - The U.S. Environmental Protection
>Agency
>(EPA) is closing its Headquarters Library to the public, as well as its own
>staff, effective October 1. The decision, formally announced Wednesday in a
>Federal Register notice, cites lack of funding for the closure.
>
>The Headquarters Library collection contains 380,000 documents on
>microfiche, including technical reports produced by EPA and its predecessor
>agencies, a microforms collection that includes back files of abstracts and
>indexes, 5,500 hard copy EPA documents, as well as more than 16,000 books
>and technical reports produced by government agencies other than EPA.
>
>This shutdown is the latest in a series of agency library closures during
>the past few weeks, government watchdogs said, and as with the other library
>collections, the books, reports and research monographs in the EPA
>Headquarters Library have been boxed up and are currently inaccessible to
>anyone.
>
>"EPA is busily crating up and locking away its institutional memory,"
>said Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility Executive Director
>Jeff Ruch, noting that more than 10,000 EPA scientists and other specialists
>are protesting the library closures as hindering their ability to do their
>jobs. "Despite its 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' public statements, EPA has no
>coherent plan let alone a timetable for making these collections available."
>
>The agency has not said when any of the materials at the library will again
>become available to its staff or the public either via the Internet or
>through inter-library loans. It has no dedicated funds for digitizing hard
>copies, making microfiche available online or re-cataloguing the tens of
>thousands of documents that will be relocated to large storage areas called
>"information repositories."
>
>Ruch criticized EPA for failing to at least issue public notice for its
>closures of its regional libraries in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City. The
>three libraries provide services for the general public in 15 states and 109
>tribal nations.
>
>But the library closures have generated interest from Congress and House
>Democrats have asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the
>effects that the EPA library closures will have on access to environmental
>information and the impacts on scientific research, regulatory quality and
>enforcement capability.
>
>* * *

Gary Liss
916-652-7850
Fax: 916-652-0485
www.garyliss.com 

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