Today, PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) issued a press release on the loss of the library resources at the EPA. As a scientist who conducts the majority of my work with NOAA, another public science-based agency, I know first-hand how valuable old reports are to even current research by documenting the first signs of trends and other data that is usually deemed unworthy at the time of actual peer-reviewed publication. The loss to the public of the huge collection of old reports within the EPA library system would be immense; as Jeff Ruch, the head of PEER commented, " 'The Bush administration apparently decided that it was politically easier to close the libraries than to burn the books, although the end result will be the same.' "
The PEER press release and other links below the fold.
I don't usually post things verbatim, but I've got some research grant deadlines approaching and this story needs to get some exposure. What's especially offensive, in addition to the scientific angle, is when you look at the economics of having the resource in-house, rather than out-sourcing it (see emphasis below) -- some "MBA Presidency" this is! All in all, it's perhaps too easy to dismiss this as "business as usual" in the current Administration, but what better way of removing inconvenient data without actually destroying it?
Gotta get rid of that tin-hat mentality, but not until there's another party's resident in the White House...
10,000 EPA SCIENTISTS PROTEST LIBRARY CLOSURES -- Loss of Access to Collections Will Hamper Emergency Response and Research
Washington, DC -- In an extraordinary letter of protest, representatives for 10,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists are asking Congress to stop the Bush administration from closing the agency's network of technical research libraries. The EPA scientists, representing more than half of the total agency workforce, contend thousands of scientific studies are being put out of reach, hindering emergency preparedness, anti-pollution enforcement and long-term research, according to the letter released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
In his proposed budget for FY 2007, President Bush deleted $2 million of support for EPA's libraries, amounting to 80% of the agency's total budget for libraries. Without waiting for Congress to act, EPA has begun shuttering libraries, closing access to collections and reassigning staff. The letter notes that "EPA library services are [now] greatly reduced or no longer available to the general public" in agency regional offices serving 19 states.
The letter signed by presidents of 17 locals of four unions (the American Federation of Federal Employees, the National Treasury Employees Union, the National Association of Government Employees and the Engineers and Scientists of California) representing more than 10,000 EPA scientists, engineers and other technical specialists was sent to Congressional appropriators this morning and states:
* "The ability of EPA to respond to emergencies will be reduced" due to a diminishing access to "the latest research on cutting-edge homeland security and public health" topics;
* Approximately 50,000 original research documents will become completely unavailable because they are not available electronically and the agency has no budget for digitizing them; and
* The public and academic researchers may lose any access to EPA library materials as services to the public are being axed and there are no plans to maintain "the inter-library loan process."
"Eliminating library access is an absolutely awful way to run an agency devoted to public and environmental health," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. "For example, important research on the Chesapeake Bay is locked away in boxes since EPA closed its Ft. Meade library this February, yet EPA still maintains that restoring the Chesapeake is a top priority."
The dogged insistence by the Bush administration on a $2 million cut in an overall EPA budget of nearly $8 billion is particularly curious. EPA internal studies show that providing full library access saves an estimated 214,000 hours in professional staff time worth some $7.5 million annually, an amount far larger than the total agency library budget of $2.5 million. [emphasis from FGD]
"The Bush administration apparently decided that it was politically easier to close the libraries than to burn the books, although the end result will be the same," Ruch added, noting that the EPA Administrator brushed aside an earlier request by the scientist unions to bargain about the library shutdowns internally.
In their letter, the EPA scientists cite library closures as "one more example of the Bush administration's effort to suppress information on environmental and public health-related topics." At the same time, other outside observers, such as the Chair of EPA's own Science Advisory Board, are expressing growing concerns over the viability and coherence of EPA's research program.
For more on this story, including the letter of protest from the EPA scientists, here's the PEER website link:
http://www.peer.org/...