EPA Budget Cuts Will Slash Research Access To Scientific Libraries

[hatrack]

Environmental consultants, researchers, state scientists and regulators, lawyers, advocacy groups, and citizens, not to mention U.S. EPA staff, are likely to lose access to unique environmental documents held by a network of technical research libraries, as EPA rushes to slash its library budget.

The proposed cuts are part of an overall 4% drop in EPA’s requested budget for Fiscal Year 2007 (FY ’07), which begins in October. The agency is developing an improvement plan for the libraries, according to EPA spokesperson Suzanne Ackerman. But EPA Region 5’s library, based in Chicago, already has been closed, and regional libraries in New York and Boston have reduced hours of operation. EPA plans to essentially gut the system by rapidly cutting $2 million out of the library budget, estimated at $2.5–6 million, says Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

The network includes 26 libraries with combined holdings of more than half a million books and reports, 3500 journal titles, 25,000 maps, and 3.6 million items on microfilm, according to the library system’s 2004 annual report <160KB PDF>. In 2004, EPA librarians handled >152,000 reference requests, conducted ~400,000 online searches, and provided >65,000 documents and books to the public, according to the report.

“It caught people by surprise, that EPA could take what is likely to be the largest environmental information network in the world and just close it down,” says Fred Stoss, the associate librarian for biological and environmental sciences and mathematics at the State University of New York, Buffalo. EPA’s Ackerman denied that services will be lost. “Retrieving materials will not only be more efficient, but easier to locate, using the agency’s online collection,” she wrote in an email. Yet, EPA did not ask for money to modernize the system in its budget request, says Emily Sheketoff, the associate executive director of the American Library Association (ALA). The association promotes libraries and public access to information.

EDIT

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/aug/policy/rr_libraries.html

[ThomCat]

1. Geez. This can only help.

:eyes:

If nobody can ever get access to environmental data and research then can it ever be put to use? Will it be easier for corporations to bamboozle the public with fake environmental policies?

Well, duh.

[Double T]

2. Open up the floodgates for the corporate polluters........

another congressional sellout of the american people for the sole interest of the corrupt corporations and the almighty #@&%$$* dollar. More republican legislative filth!!

[KT2000]

3. The Dark Ages

are upon us.