Author Archives: Beth Goble

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is the public policy research arm of Congress. This legislative branch agency works exclusively for Members of Congress, their committees and their staffs. Their reports provide members of Congress and their staff with concise, extensively documented information on issues of interest to Congress. CRS does not provide direct public access to its reports, requiring citizens to request them from their Member of Congress. Additionally, several private companies sell CRS reports to those who can pay. Some reports have been released by members of Congress and are available on the Internet.
Making all CRS reports available without charge on the Internet has long been sought by advocates for open access to government-funded information. A coalition of groups including the American Library Association is lobbying Congress to enable no-fee online public access.
http://www.opencrs.com/about.php

Since the FY 2007 budget was passed retaining the drastic (nearly 80%) cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency library network, several regional libraries have closed (Dallas, Chicago, Kansas City, and New York City, which has replaced its Region 2 Library web site with a series of environmental quotations). Others have greatly reduced services to EPA research, regulatory, policy, and enforcement staff (Boston, San Francisco). EPA Headquarters Libraries have closed or are in the process of closing, and nearly all public access to the EPA Libraries has ceased. The EPA plan is to digitize library holdings to provide scientific and public access to the collections. However, many scientists, EPA staff and librarians argue that the EPA library online services are not fully in place and are not adequate to meet the current as well as future demands of users. EPA administrators have been called to testify before Congress, and have promised to consult with Congress and stakeholders before proceeding with dismantlement of its library system.
EPA issued an Interim Library Policy on April 16. According to EPA, draft procedures on library usage statistics and dispersion procedures are being developed with input from EPA library managers. EPA says that external stakeholders, including Cathy Hartmann, a digitization expert from the University of North Texas, will be involved in the process.
How are Nebraska libraries using EPA resources? Have the regional library closures, especially the Region 5 library in Kansas City, affected your library services?

The directories of Nebraska’s federal and state depository libraries got a new look recently. Contact names and emails of library staff will be updated automatically when our comprehensive library directory is updated. The depository directories are located at
http://nlc.nebraska.gov/Govdocs/nefed.asp
http://nlc.nebraska.gov/Govdocs/locdep.asp
There are 15 Nebraska depositories participating in the U.S. Government Printing Office depository program. The Library Commission operates the Nebraska state publications depository program for 14 depository libraries. It is now an “epubs” program, offering permanent hosting and OCLC cataloging for electronic versions of state agency publications. More information about the epubs program and signing up to receive notification of new epubs is available at http://nlc.nebraska.gov/epubs/