june06c.indd


Ber nadette Murphy W a s h i n g t o n  H o t l i n e  

Cuts to EPA budget could mean library 
closures 
The President’s proposed 2007 budget for the 
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), re­
leased in March, includes a $2 million cut that, 
if implemented, will likely result in the closure 
of the EPA Headquarters Library as well as many 
of its 27 regional and laboratory libraries. 

Additionally, half of the FY 2006 serials 
budget, $500,000 out of $1 million, has been 
cut from the serials budget of the Offi ce of 
Administration and Resources Management 
research libraries in Cincinnati and Research 
Triangle Park, North Carolina. The total bud­
get cut to the EPA libraries is $2.5 million. 

If the budget cuts are implemented, they 
will severely weaken or eliminate public 
access to the EPA’s scientific and technical 
information resources, as well as the expertise 
of the information professionals who know 
how to identify and analyze them. 

EPA libraries are essential 
Since its creation in the early 1970s, EPA has 
been a key source of essential information for 
the general public, for researchers across the 
country, and for the agency’s own scientists 
and staff, from whom the libraries handle 
more than 134,000 research requests each 
year. The libraries house unique collections, 
including an estimated 50,000 one­of­a­kind 
primary source documents that are available 
nowhere else. 

In a meeting between EPA staff, ALA, 
the American Association of Law Libraries, 
and the Special Libraries Association, it was 
indicated that the agency is committed to 
digitizing all unique materials, and that they 
are reviewing how to phase­in that process. 
They do not, however, have either a business 
plan or a timeline for doing so. In the interim, 
significant resources are likely to be put in 
real risk of loss. 

Bernadette Murphy is communications specialist at ALA’s 
Washington Offi  ce, e-mail: bmurphy@alawash.org 

EPA’s regional libraries serve the public 
with collections that are tailored to meet the 
needs of constituents by geographic region— 
such as mining in Colorado and wetlands in 
Maryland. If these regional libraries close, 
as they almost certainly will if the proposed 
budget cuts are approved, it will become 
extremely difficult—and in some cases 
impossible—for constituents and even EPA 
staff to find reliable information on sensitive 
environmental issues. The negative impact 
on public access to government information 
will be enormous. 

As an example of what is at risk here, in 
the late 1980s or early 1990s, the EPA library 
in San Francisco sent many of its reports 
and documents to Hawaii. The University of 
Hawaii (UH) Library speculated that perhaps 
the library got them from another EPA library 
or office and they were duplicates; they were 
under the impression that a library had closed 
and Hawaii was getting their collection. Over 
a period of years, UH added the documents to 
its collection. They found that many of them 
were not in OCLC (Online Computer Library 
Center), nor were they listed in EPA Index, so 
the university did original cataloging on them 
and uploaded the records to OCLC. In many 
cases, UH was the only library listed in OCLC 
as owning these materials. The October 2004 
flood in Hawaii destroyed about 85 percent 
of UH’s EPA documents, including most of 
those that they got from the EPA library in 
California. Where or if this material is avail­
able anywhere else is not clear, but it would 
only be in EPA libraries. 

Your action needed 
Urge your member of Congress to restore 
the $2.5 million needed for the EPA libraries 
to continue to operate at the same level in 
FY 2007 and to ensure continued public ac­
cess to these essential resources. To contact 
Congress, visit www.onlineadvocacy.net/. 
Stay tuned to ALAWON for updates on this 
issue. 

June 2006  379 C&RL News 

http:www.onlineadvocacy.net
mailto:bmurphy@alawash.org