Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Government Fingers EPA Library for Cuts
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
While the polar icecaps are dwindling it seems the EPA’s libraries are too!
The folks over at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility think the Bush administration may be trying to ‘lobotomize the EPA’. EPA libraries serving 15 states have been closed in recent months Chacago, Dallas, and Kansas City, Mo. Restrictions to access have been placed on 4 other EPA libraries affecting 16 other states. Washington DC EPA headquarters 2 libraries were closed in October.
With environmental issues reaching critical mass why is the EPA closing and restricting access to information so desperately needed by the science community?
The EPA claims it’s part of modernization. Vast repositories of information will sit , for perhaps years if not forever, waiting to be digitized. While that information sits, it will remain unseen and unused.
Some are saying science journals are being tossed into dumpsters. This is information that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to compile. An EPA spokesperson says they are recycling ‘non-unique documents’.
Non-uniquie? We can find that information somewhere else, but where else? How long would it take to find it and can we afford to waste time looking for something wemay not even know exists if we can’t see it?
Congress has not approved these closures. The EPA library budget is $2.5 million per year. Estimated savings would be $7.5 million from the closures. Nice work if you can get it! A tidy 5 million dollar savings per year AND control over access to information by both the EPA Staff, and the public!
What’s up?
The EPA’s 26 libraries contained as many as 500,000 books with irreplaceable research and studies which took decades to assemble.
Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall, and we do not have decades to put him back together again.
Labels: Cuts, EPA, EPA libraries, Speak no Evil
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Government Fingers EPA Library for Cuts
