Questions for Sept. 28: Accomplishments and Impact

[Tom Beierle <beierle@rff.org>]

Now that we have reached the second to last day of this dialogue, it is a good time to reflect on what we have been doing and the impact that it will have.  I have agreed to moderate today, and I'll start with a recap of what we've been doing over the last two weeks.

As Laurie mentioned on Wednesday, there are around 150 of us posting messages from all over the country, and maybe 400 more have stopped by to see what is going on.  We've had good exchanges on issues ranging from trust in EPA to the use of libraries as neutral community forums, often engaging people with quite different viewpoints.  Participants have provided each other with a host of helpful resources, and some have related their own stories about the successes and frustrations of public participation in environmental issues.  Finally, participants have given EPA a number of pieces of advice, constructive criticism, and ideas for how to improve information access for libraries and others.

This leads me to a few questions about how we evaluate the dialogue in which we've all been engaged.  First, how do we define success in achieving the original goal of this dialogue:  exploring the idea of expanding the capacity of libraries to act as key sources of environmental information for communities?  What are the "take home messages" for EPA from this dialogue?  What have you gotten out of it?

Second, how do you want to hear back from EPA and Information Renaissance about the impact of the dialogue?

I look forward to today's discussion