Posted by Jonathan Adler:
EPA Library Closures Update:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_12_31-2007_01_06.shtml#1167926110
Last fall I [1]posted on the Environmental Protection Agency's plans
to shutter its regional libraries. In the intervening months, it
appears the EPA has moved forward with its plans, despite growing
criticism and the concerns of the incoming Congressional leadership.
Among those who have challenged the plans are library associations,
EPA professional staff, and environmentalist groups. A group of
environmental law professors (including yours truly) also sent a
letter to the incoming Congressional leadership (including relevatn
committee chairs) encouraging them to challenge the EPA's plans. The
letter reads in part:
As you are undoubtedly aware, on September 20th, EPA published a
Federal Register notice announcing that, as of October 1st, the
main library at the Agency�s Washington, D.C. headquarters would be
shuttered to EPA�s own staff, as well as to the general public,
ostensibly for budgetary reasons. EPA libraries are already closed
down in a number of the Agency�s regional offices, as well as in
its headquarters, and the hours of a number of its other regional
libraries have been significantly curtailed. The vital technical
documents that those libraries contained are now being dispersed.
In some cases, reportedly, they are actually being destroyed.
When it made these steps public, the Administration stated that
EPA�s staff and the public may now access the information they
require through EPA websites, rather than in hard copy. That
contention is substantially false. Although the federal government
has made significant strides in providing internet access to its
documents, the vast majority of the documents in the closed EPA
libraries are not digitized, and no funds have been allocated for
that process to be completed. The likelihood that critical
documents will now be damaged or lost is therefore very high. . . .
Ironically, the monetary savings that will result from these
library shutdowns seem paltry, if not entirely illusory. . . . As a
percentage of EPA�s overall budget, any fiscal savings from the
closures will be minuscule.
Moreover, EPA�s libraries were also a valuable repository of
environmental information for the general public with respect to
such topics as historical trends in the contamination of local
areas and techniques for the mitigation and control of pollution. .
. .
Over the holidays, Rebecca Bratspies posted [2]an update on Biolaw:
The Bush Administration has apparently began to feel the pressure.
On December 11, 2006, EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock spoke
for the first time about the library closures and defended the
closures as a budgetary matter and again asserted that documents
would be available online. However, virtually none of the EPA
records that exist prior to 1990 have been digitized and there are
no funds allocated for that process in EPA's 2007 budget. Peacock
did indicate that EPA had "rescheduled the recycling" (read
destruction) of documents in light of the congressional request.
Much of the national press picked up the story at this point.
Nonetheless, as of now, E.P.A has closed its libraries in Dallas,
Chicago and Kansas City. The Boston, New York, San Francisco and
Seattle libraries are operating with reduced hours and public
access. The central library in Washington, D.C., while nominally
still open to E.P.A staff, has been closed to the public.
Apparently in an attempt to make the changes irreversable, an
unknown number of documents have already been destroyed and the
collections of the closed libraries dispersed. In one of the more
bizarre turns, all the library furniture and fixtures from the
Chicago library, said to be worth $80,000 were sold at auction for
$350. The unseemly haste with which these critical libraries have
been dismantled is startling.
Whatever one's view of current environmental regulations, or the EPA,
closing libraries before all relevant materials are available on-line
is a bad move. If motivated by budgetary concerns, it is penny-wise,
but pound-foolish.
References
1. http://volokh.com/posts/1159219143.shtml
2. http://biolaw.blogspot.com/2006/12/update-on-epa-library-closures.html
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