Return to Article: EPA officials defend library closures, tout benefits of digitization
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20140
Upon reviewing the "EPA FY 2007 LIBRARY PLAN: National Framework for the Headquarters and Regional Libraries" that is available on the EPA Web site, I find the plan to be a decent one. I think the biggest problem that many people will have is trusting the current administration to carry it out. Frankly, they've done a lot to cause us pause.
As stated, the level of concern surrounding the digitization of EPA reports is good to see. I have often been very frustrated with trying to find EPA reports -- especially some of the older ones. Let's hope that the process can unearth a lot of the ones that have been seemingly lost.
My biggest concern is what exactly the EPA employees will have access to. I don't want to hear that they have "Inside EPA" and Google and that's about it. From some of the crap that I've seen published in EPA reports, that might just be the case. I get very weary of scanning a list of literature referred to in a recent EPA report and spotting standards listed that were superseded a quarter of a century ago or related federal regulations that are outdated. How much of this is due to a shift to scientists and engineers wallowing around literature themselves instead of via their librarians remains to be seen.
The big question for me remains -- can we have some sort of independent investigation of the progress being made? It seems that we have a reasonable plan that few in the general public believe will happen as it should. Is some sort of audit -- perhaps by a team of independent science librarians in order? It might help to reassure the public.
I'm not sure how a government entity can show proof that Web scrubbing (destruction of electronic government information that is perhaps advantageous to one side of a political issue) is not occurring, but that might make an interesting thing for some of our nation's computer scientists to undertake.
Ideas expressed are my own and may not be shared with my employer ... and apparently are not by many of my colleagues.
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20125
And yet, nowhere in the briefing from the EPA does it say that everything will be digitized before they close the library. Closing with full access to all information is one thing (even though it places a burden on the person(s) accessing the information versus those providing it) and closing without having everything available is another. Not requiring that all information be digitized before closure could lead to information being lost in the process.
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