Posting for 9/19

["Howard Fox" <Howard.Fox@spl.org>]

EPA INFORMATION: WHO IS THE AUDIENCE?

The question about quantity and quality of EPA information is of course not just relevant now. The EPA has been a prolific publisher of reports and documents since its inception. As a depository library we have received and continue to receive these publications. I don't know what kind of internal review and assessment the EPA goes through to determine what is published. I assume some material is published for legal reasons, other materials based on assumption of use and need. As a depository library we can pick categories we wish to receive, and so the EPA through the Government Printing Office may thereby get some feedback on what is felt to be useful and needed by the selection process of hundreds of depository libraries.

With the Internet you in a sense move publishing online and it becomes a bit more difficult to assess whether what you "publish" is truly used and is what the user really needs for their information quest or research. Just because you have hits to a part of your homepage or an item is downloaded doesn't mean that item met the user's needs. I suppose you can do sampling or ask for feedback but both are imprecise determinants.

In addition, when you publish online and do not print an item, you face the issue of how long you keep an item available online. Does the EPA have a requirement to have online reports available forever? If not, what happens when it is taken down? Libraries have the expectation of being able to get most any item through interlibrary loan services. If the item really never resides as a physical item in a library, and never gets cataloged, if it is not saved in some way on an EPA server and cataloged through EPA libraries, then you run the risk of an item being in a sense lost forever.