Mandate preserves EPA library system

Librarians nationwide, including two from Eastern Washington who were part of the effort, are celebrating what they consider a victory over Environmental Protection Agency budget-cutters.

Tucked into the Omnibus Appropriations Bill signed this week by President Bush was a mandate that the EPA preserve its library system and reopen four that had been closed to the public. It was a relatively tiny matter in the 11,000-page document that authorizes $555 billion in domestic spending.

An EPA regional library in Seattle – one of 10 nationwide – had not been closed, though librarians had feared it eventually might be. The Washington Post reported in 2006 that the agency planned to cut its library budget by 80 percent to save $2 million.

“Philosophically, the library community believes that the information assembled by the government should be easily available to the people,” said Mike Wirt, director of the Spokane County Library District. “That (EPA) information is so technical, it’s probably one of the few places it’s available.”

Wirt and Kristie Kirkpatrick, director of the Whitman County Library District, along with three West Side library professionals, went to Washington, D.C., in May to talk to lawmakers about a number of matters, including the EPA libraries.

They were among 5,000 or so librarians from across the nation who participated in the National Library Day event, said Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association’s office in Washington, D.C.

The librarians’ message: The EPA’s cost-cutting measure affected everyone, even people who live nowhere near one of the shuttered libraries in Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City and Washington, D.C.

Over time, the regional offices have developed different areas of expertise, accessible nationwide through referrals from other EPA libraries, as well as from local library systems like those in Spokane, Sheketoff said.

EPA officials in Washington, D.C., did not return holiday-week phone messages seeking comment. Agency officials have said in the past that the vast store of environmental information would be available online and through inter-library loans.

But much of the material has not been digitized to make electronic access possible, Sheketoff said. Even if it were, she said, no one would know where to find a needed piece of information about a specific toxin, chemical health risk or local environmental cleanup, for instance.

“You can’t just say to someone, ‘It’s on the Internet.’ Information has to be organized,” Sheketoff said. “The expertise that was gained by these librarians over 30 years was lost.”

Kirkpatrick said that while she seldom has need to access EPA information for patrons of the Whitman County library system, it’s vital to people just up the road at Washington State University.

“We need to ensure the rights of scientists, researchers and ordinary citizens to access this public information are protected,” she said.