Libraries & NRC Documents: ALA Says It's the Government's Call

-- Library Journal, 12/19/2006

NBC News recently reported that "thousands" of sensitive documents from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are made available to the public in public libraries, even though related documents—many of them older—had been pulled by the NRC from its online site after the 9/11 attacks. Asked for comment, Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association's Washington Office, said, "This issue is a U.S. government issue. The NBC story never identified what libraries they went to." She said that the federal depository libraries cited were probably some combination of public and university libraries: "After 9/11, the NRC, as did other federal agencies, reviewed whatever documents were out in the public and decided that the information had been out there for some time." She added, "The job of the library is to make the information available for the public. The government determines whether their documents should be in the public domain."

Meanwhile, LJ was able to fill in some details on the charge made by Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), ranking member of the Committee on Science, Democratic Caucus that not only did the NRC not remove sensitive information from the 86 local public document rooms at public libraries near the nation's commercial nuclear power reactors, but "the NRC has declined to accept these records from institutions seeking to return these collections to the NRC in the past." He said, "The example that has come to my attention, and it may not be the only instance, occurred several months ago when the NRC declined to accept the collection of records maintained by the Greenfield Community College library in Greenfield, Massachusetts, that it maintained for the now decommissioned Yankee Rowe Nuclear Plant."

The issue actually arose before the 9/11 attacks. Greenfield Dean of Academic Affairs David Ram told LJ that, "In 1999, we got a letter from NRC, saying that NRC is 'abandoning' the collection and relinquishing ownership to the college, effective September 17." In 2002, an attorney Jonathan M. Block, who works with citizens' groups monitoring nuclear plants and had often consulted the microfiche collection—which covers every single nuclear plant in the country—offered to purchase it. The library was moving, and agreed earlier this year to sell the collection—which former director Carol Letson characterized as "extremely large, four cabinets full of drawers full of fiche"—to Block. Letson told LJ that the discussions with the NRC were not post-9/11. He delivered the collection to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which explains how it is making the documents, updated through November 1999, available, describing "the NRC's records [as] becoming more dated and less needed" by the college.