ALA briefing on EPA library closings
Submitted by jrjacobs on Sat, 2007-01-20 10:23.
Hi gang. It's saturday AM and I'm at the ALA Washington Office briefing. On the agenda are updates on the 110th Congress, participatory networks in libraries, Gates Foundation Connectivity Project, and EPA *and other federal libraries* closures. That's right, OTHER FEDERAL LIBRARIES!! Not only is EPA under fire, but other agency libraries are going the way of the Dodo. I've come in in the middle of the briefing, so missed the first few items on the agenda. Below are some things said during the briefing. Any errors in misquoting are purely mine. Sometimes these fingers just type what they want :-)
Mike Flynn, Director of Office of Information Analysis and Access, EPA. He made a joke about having his bodyguards outside the room. I'm glad that librarians are becoming known as rough and tumble! Maybe we need some leather jackets.
Anyway, Mike says that his office is trying to provide access to information, GIS data... to EPA employees and the public. Blah, blah, blah, great respect for libraries and librarians.
Mike will Address 3 questions:
--where are we headed?
--how do we plan to get there?
--What are we doing (or not doing) now?
"EPA's vision is to be the premier environmental library network that provides timely and quality information and services to its employees and the public."
(JRJ) Ok, the first several slides are clearly PR fluff. More from Mike:
How do we get there? Factors include a demand for information faster, and an expanded role of the internet. EPA is increasing its reliance on electronic delivery, but that's not to preclude their physical presence of 26 libraries. They are not on a road to closing all EPA libraries. but want to maintain a physical presence across the US and maintaining library services for EPA employees and the public.
Services include:
--ILL
--Access to online library system
--Access to EPA publications via the National service center website
--Recently instituted FAQ system
Implemented these steps and are now in the process of seeking input as we move forward.
Ok, now it's the Q&A session.
Several librarians emphasized the fact that EPA library closings have great effect on libraries in the region. Kathy Hartman at U North Texas offered to house the regional EPA Dallas library's collections but the offer was turned down. EPA officials said they wanted to assure that EPA documents were kept within the EPA library network. 3 repositories will be maintained.
How can libraries continue to get access to documents via ILL? and are any EPA documents being disappeared?
Each of the libraries which have closed, EPA has gone through their collections to identify documents for retention. EPA has NOT destroyed documents. Documents from regional libraries have been sent to repositories.
What are your next steps? Who else beyond the library community are seen as stakeholders?
Science community is very important as is the library community. Questioner strongly suggests that EPA contact the academic, medical and legal communities.
What is the "original inventory"? EPA will complete digitization of documents in several categories by 1/31/07. There are other categories which are being worked on.
Mike says, EPA is engaged, and wants to talk with stakeholders. they are committed to digitization and welcome input.
So what I'm hearing is EPA wants to talk with stakeholders (libraries, scientists...) but they're going ahead with their plans. This was classic doublespeak IMHO. EPA has already committed to closing libraries, digitizing documents, consolidating collections in 3 repositories, cutting funding for journal subscriptions etc. So what good will it do for them to go and talk with stakeholders? Librarians have been VERY vocal, both at this meeting and over the last year, that what the stakeholders NEED is libraries, services and collections throughout the US. Any thoughts?
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EPA Update VERY troubling
I'm extremely disappointed that UNT's offer was turned down. Based on their other electronic repository projects, UNT has a solid reputation for providing access to materials they receive from federal agencies. They clearly have the resources to make EPA documents available. Unlike the EPA itself it seems.
I agree with you that "talking to stakeholders" after you've already implemented your plans is strange and in my view, not very helpful. But it is typical of this administration which considers any form of cooperation/bipartisanship/partnership to be telling people what they're doing and having everyone else go along.
I called for openness to dialog and to assist EPA with their resources on the govdoc-l listserv. But the way you present the EPA Update makes it seem like EPA isn't prepared to work in good faith to assure that their collections remain publicly accessible.
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"And besides all that, what we need is a decentralized, distributed system of depositing electronic files to local libraries willing to host them." -- Daniel Cornwall, tipping his hat to Cato the Elder for the original quote.
EPA at ALA
I was at a different ALA session where the EPA representatives spoke--and I felt they spoke oh so carefully. Their message was that things aren't as bad as we heard while gently suggesting their critics are unfair and misinformed.
The EPA representatives bragged about how much information is being made available to EPA employees through their desktop computers. I hope the information is well organized and the employees are trained in information searching and retrieval. Otherwise the consequences can be seeking the proverbial needle in a haystack or, just as disheartening, not finding the purloined letter (as in the Poe story where the police searched every conceivable hiding place for a letter that remained hidden by being in plain sight).
The EPA people said they had a two year window for digitizing documents. It didn't make me feel any better to see the EPA representatives clustered around a scanner demonstration the next day--they should have had suitable equipment in place before they started clsoing the libraries.
Be sure to look at the Minority Blog:
EPA Library Modernization Makes Information MORE Accessible, Not Less
"Not surprisingly, these changes have been met with some hysterical criticism. One of our witnesses today has written that EPA is now withholding "life-saving information." The director of a public employees group has even gone so far to say that EPA’s actions "threaten to subtract from the sum total of human knowledge." I have discovered that these criticisms appear to be unfounded, and I am glad the Administrator is here to shed further light on EPA’s library plans."
Disappointing Minority Blog
Thanks Docwonk for link to the minority blog. I found it very disappointing that the blog doesn't accept comments.
Aside from that though, I found the list of books "still available in EPA libraries" to be besides the point. How is knowing that the Lorax is available in EPA libraries supposed to help us find EPA publications.
They could have made more headway by citing examples of improved access. Instead they took the depressing yet familiar tack of ridiculing their critics.
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"And besides all that, what we need is a decentralized, distributed system of depositing electronic files to local libraries willing to host them." -- Daniel Cornwall, tipping his hat to Cato the Elder for the original quote.
somewhere in the middle
As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Docwonk's link is to the minority (Republican) side of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and is in defense of Republican policy over the last 8 years.
I think it'll be true for the most part that digitization of historic EPA regional documents and collections will be a boon to researchers and the public -- except of course those documents that are not digitized because of some copyright snafu or those deemed sensitive to one political side or the other and therefore consciously swept under the scanner. (And for anyone who thinks that the Feds don't do that, see this recent FGI post about the FCC doing just that.)
However, in closing the EPA libraries, EPA officials are using specious arguments and diminishing the role that physical EPA libraries have historically played in both the research process of EPA scientists and the public's access to environmental information. Additionally, as many libraries have found, going digital is MORE expensive in the long run (I won't get into the discussion here about how much GPO's FDSys will cost in the long run nor the shift from the first sale doctrine toward licensing digital information, but ask me sometime at a future ALA conference :-) ) and does not preclude the need for actual librarians and physical collections.
There was no talk at ALA about cuts to EPA library journal subscriptions. ALL libraries are dealing with that, but EPA scientists are particularly hard hit because closed EPA libraries cannot give them access to interlibrary loan networks on which your average researcher can rely to get articles/studies from unsubscribed journals. Add to that the fact that many EPA researchers and the public must now increasingly rely for their access to environmental information/research on EPA public information officers -- NOT EPA librarians -- and therein lies the travesty to this whole affair. The first step in eroding environmental protection laws is eroding the information networks and this is exactly what's happening.
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