RE: Question for Sept. 20: Federal, state and local EPA workers, what are you doing to help librarians?

[Lucy Park <park.lucy@epa.gov>]

As a contractor working as the EPA Library Network Coordinator, I can provide some information about some of the things that the EPA Library Network (and its parent office, the Office of Environmental Information) does to help libraries. This is just a part of the picture, because I know that various other offices have their own outreach initiatives.

First, the 28 EPA libraries make EPA documents and other publications available to the public by cataloging them, making them searchable via our Online Library System (OLS), and loaning them out to other libraries. EPA librarians also help the public (including librarians) find EPA information, no matter where it might reside or in what format.  Public librarians, call the EPA library in your region if you need help! You can get contact information at http://www.epa.gov/natlibra/ 

Second, EPA usually has a booth at the annual conference of the American Library Association.  At this year's conference in Chicago we gave out hundreds of brochures, posters, pathfinders, and CDROMS containing environmental software. We also fielded numerous reference questions from people about environmental problems in their communities - thank goodness for Internet connections in the booth!

The Library Network also publishes a document called the Core List for an Environmental Reference Collection.  This is essentially a bibliography of what we feel to be the most helpful resources (books, databases, web sites) in the environmental field.  The Core List is currently undergoing revision, so it's not available at this time, but it will be available within a few months.  It will be a web accessible document.

Lucy Park
GCI Information Services