EPA Libraries Subject of Heated Hearing on Capitol Hill

-- Library Journal, 2/8/2007

The closing of five Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) libraries was the subject of some partisan sniping Tuesday during a hearing held by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said that the libraries were being closed because few people used them and the documents within them were being digitized. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), however, confronted Johnson with internal documents that suggested that he was unaware of the extent of the closings and that EPA staffers at one library were ordered to throw away scientific journals, according to the AP. Johnson responded that documents were discarded if they were damaged or duplicative.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) took the path of ridicule, hoisting several books and materials that were still at EPA libraries but were hardly relevant to the agency's mission. They included Dr. Suess's The Lorax, a Pilates exercise video, and an outdated computer software guide from 1983. According to a statement from Imhofe's office, EPA libraries include the novels Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden, and The Bonesetter's Daughter, by Amy Tan. Also, Inhofe quoted EPA statistics to say that at the Region 6 library in Dallas, three people a month walked in over the past three years.

"While we now know that you can get a Dr. Seuss book, unfortunately, according to your own staff in one of the libraries 600 to 700 linear feet of the chemical library collection was discarded," Boxer said to Johnson, according to the Environmental News Service. Leslie Burger, president of the American Library Association (ALA), commented that the EPA's plan can at best be "described as convoluted and complicated." She added, "We are concerned that years of research and study about the environment could be lost forever."

Boxer said in a statement out that the ALA and EPA scientists and staff oppose these actions, and that the EPA has not been clear about the fate of the libraries. Burger said in a statement, "While having the information digitized is indeed important, it should not be the driving force behind shuttering the libraries and, thus, taking from the public one of the libraries' most important assets: the librarians."