LACUNY Institutional Review Board Workshop

The LACUNY Professional Development Committee and Junior Faculty Research Roundtable are pleased to present:

Institutional Review Board Workshop
Thursday, February 26
10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Grad Center, Room 9204
FREE

RSVP by February 24 to Sara Marcus at: smmarcus@qcc.cuny.edu

A panel discussion and workshop on Institutional Review Boards — which projects may need the approval of your campus IRB (and why), and how to navigate the process smoothly.

Speakers:

• Patricia MacCubbin, Executive Director of Research Conduct, Special Advisor to the Vice Chancellor for Research, City University of New York
• Beth Posner, Head of Interlibrary Loan Services, Mina Rees Library, CUNY Graduate Center
• Mark Aaron Polger, Reference and Instruction Librarian, College of Staten Island
• Sara Marcus, Electronic Resource / Web Librarian, Queensborough Community College

For directions, please go to:
http://www.gc.cuny.edu/about_gc/directions.htm

Refreshments will be provided.

Reminder: Email Sara Marcus to RSVP: smmarcus@qcc.cuny.edu

Greening Libraries / Greener Communities (4) – Afternoon Keynote – Majora Carter

The LACUNY Institute “Greening Libraries ==> Greener Communities” was held on Friday, October 31, 2008 at the Bronx Library Center, a branch of the New York Public Library. The conference was co-sponsored by the Library Association of the City University of New York and the New York Public Library. It received support from the New York Library Club, Springer, EBSCO and BUSCA.

Following the breakout sessions, the branch manager for the Bronx Library Center, Leslie Harrison, welcomed everyone back into the auditorium and gave some history of the notable building. Then Jennifer King, LACUNY Institute co-chair, introduced the final speaker of the day, Majora Carter. King took a moment to ask the audience to join her in wishing Carter a happy birthday.

Majora Carter is the founder of the Sustainable South Bronx, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and someone the BBC World Service as called “New York City’s most influential environmentalist.”
She opened with her audience of librarians in mind. Carter’s image featured on the cover of the Scholastic book, Boundary Breakers: Remarkable People was the opening backdrop as the keynote recalled her childhood love for the Hunts Point branch of the New York Public Library. She offered some family history, weaving the personal and the public. Her parents’ immigration from the south, redlining, white flight and >Robert Moses’ building of highways through the Bronx to connect Manhattan and the suburbs all figured into the story. Landord disinvestment, the torching and abandonment of apartment buildings and the demolition of playgrounds and school band programs all colored Carter’s childhood and led to the demise of the Bronx. The borough now supports 40% of New York City’s waste sewage plants and power plants. Carter notes that both race and class have determined environmental injustice. As a result of this dumping in the Bronx one in four children has asthma and many suffer from learning disabilities.

Carter began her worked to stop environmental racism when New York City decided to close the Fresh Kills garbage dump and build a sewage treatment plant in the Bronx to replace it. Carter joined with others to revitalized the south Bronx water front that had become a dump. A neighborhood that had been defined by crime and garbage could now be defined by emerging green spaces. She founded Sustainable South Bronx (SSB) and helped develop the Bronx greenway master plan. This plan will use $1.25 Million to create a park that will eventually unify islands of green spaces in the Bronx. SSB went on to develop the Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training program (BEST), the first green training program in the U.S. Carter noted that people in the Bronx, with a 25% rate of unemployment, could be trained to do waterfront restoration, tree trimming, etc. Young people are being steered towards employment and away from prison. She illustrated how transformative BEST has been for the community with the story of how a young man trained in tree pruning became a social scientist when he realized that trimming trees let a street light flood an area that formerly had been a dark place where drug dealers lurked. Tree trimming led to crime reduction. Because the South Bronx has been used for so long as a dumping ground for other people’s waste, Carter and SSB have asked their community to look into this waste and think of ways they can use what is there. Young people have been trained in carpentry so that wooden palates from the food industry have been turned into furniture.

The Sustainable South Bronx has worked creatively. Lacking funds to publicize the newly developed park, they used the simple device of a green line painted down a sidewalk to lead people to the park They started a green roof program that even included small vegetable gardens. SSB has partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to bring a Fabrication Laboratory (FabLab) to the Bronx. The goal of FabLab is “to bring ‘digital fabrication,’ the modern means of production, to ordinary people for solving community problems. Ideas are conceived and designed in the digital world, and can be realized in the physical world through the FabLab.”

Carter is hopeful that the South Bronx can be turned into an Eco Industrial Center. Job creation within a community coupled with the resources available in the community can turn things around. SSB had identified an area of the Bronx that would be ideal for creating an Eco Industrial Center but, unfortunately, New York City chose to use the same site for a 2000 bed prison. Carter offered the site Green For All for further investigation. Its goal is to create green jobs here in the U.S. Green for All, along with Carter’s own, newly created consulting firm, work to help businesses and communities to see their green potential. Majoracartergoup itself is currently working with Elizabeth City, North Carolina, to ally the threat of a rising sea level.

Carter closed on a very powerful note, imagining that Martin Luther King did not see a future of white or black or yellow or brown, but rather a future for all of green. Green meaning people living healthy and sustainable lives.

How librarians will carry on a greening mission is a work in progress and calls for persistence and creative thinking. The LACUNY/NYPL conference “Greening Libraries ==> Greener Communities contributed in its way to set this course in motion.

Following Majora Carter’s presentation, Jennifer King presented Carter with a certificate from LACUNY honoring the environmental activist for her contribution, as a non-librarian, to the work of LACUNY.

City University of New York University Librarian, Curtis Kendrick, wrapped up the day. Kendrick thanked the audience for coming and congratulated CUNY libraries for the role they are playing in the University with its greater efforts towards creating a more sustainable institution.

Greening Libraries / Greener Communities (3) – Afternoon Breakouts – Greening Funding, Greening Gadgets, Greening Buildings

The LACUNY Institute “Greening Libraries ==> Greener Communities” was held on Friday, October 31, 2008 at the Bronx Library Center, a branch of the New York Public Library. The conference was co-sponsored by the Library Association of the City University of New York and the New York Public Library. It received support from the New York Library Club, Springer, EBSCO and BUSCA.

The program broke at mid-day for a green box lunch that supported local business and included wraps served on plates made from recycled yogurt containers and cloth napkins (that were all collected after the meal to be saved for use at future events), fresh apples and cider from a New York State farm, and handy recycling and composting bins.

On hand were representatives from Con Edison and Springer. The CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities had materials on display. A tour of the Bronx Library Center provided a chance to learn first hand how the green building was constructed and functions.

The first part of the afternoon program offered three breakout sessions.

Session A: Ines Sucre, Reference Librarian, Foundation Center, spoke about “Greening Funds.”
Efforts by libraries to retrofit for sustainablity could use a boost from some outside funding. This is where the Foundation Center can help. Sucre noted that the Center produces trend reports and offers free and fee-based services. Its partnerships with public library branches supply free access to its databases. Sucre recommended that the audience read the Philanthropy News Digest, available on the Center’s web site, and also check out the RFP Bulletin to get ideas about what kinds of requests for funding have been written in the past. Sucre pointed out that only 20% funders have web sites so they often go to the Foundation Center to post their RFPs. Other features of the Foundation Center worth examining include its blog (often the source of book reviews), the Foundation Center statistics, and archived webinars and videos.

The Foundation Center web site includes five search tools. The web site itself can be searched. The Catalog of Non-Profit Literature is a searchable database of the literature of philanthropy . The Foundation Finder allows a search by name for basic information about private and community foundations in the U.S. Sucre noted the Foundation Finder which is similar to a service available on the Guidestar web site and acknowledged that an advantage of using Guidestar is that their site also includes foundations that have not yet offered grants. The 990 Finder ) allows visitors to look up the IRS returns (Forms 990 and 990-PF) of private foundations, public charities, and other nonprofits When examining a potential donor, libraries should take a look at the 990-PF’s to see patterns of funding. Sucre directed the audience specifically to p, 11 to examine the grants list of the organization. Lastly, the Foundation Directory Online Subscription Service with monthly or annual subscription options allows you to search the databases of over 90,000 grantmakers and more than 900,000 grants. Although, as noted, some libraries offer access to the database, you can only save searches if you have a private account. Sucre encouraged participants to register on the web site and to be careful when searching to only get the subject areas of interest.

Libraries will be happy to learn that the Foundation Center currently has information for grants for preservation in libraries archives and museum. And libraries thinking green should investigate trends in environmental funding, historically a small area of philanthropy. Education gets most grant money. But the good news is that giving for the environment and animals rose 10% in 2006.
Sucre described the foundation landscape. Private foundations only fund other non-profits. There are three types of foundations: independent (most are like this), company-sponsored, and operating (usually non-grant making). Foundations are required to make a 5% payout. The current distribution of giving shows that 39% of foundations have given 26% of all the funding in 2006. Small foundations are better bets for project level funding. Sucre advices that since some foundations do not give to uninvited fund seekers, send a query letter first before sending a proposal.

Session B. The second session offered Pamela Lieber, Supervising Librarian of the Adult Collection, Bronx Library Center spoke about Greening Gadgets.

BLOGGER NOTE: WERE YOU THERE? IF SO, WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD YOUR NOTES FROM THE SESSION TO OUR BLOG? Contact Beth Evans, bevans at brooklyn dot cuny dot edu and Beth will be happy to include your notes in the LACUNY blog.

Session C. The third breakout session was a panel on Greening Buildings. Speaking on the panel, moderated by Sarah Laleman Ward (Moderator), Outreach Reference & Instruction Librarian, Hunter College Library, CUNY, were Daniel Heuberger AIA, Dattner Architects, Jim Lloyd, Assistant Vice President of Campus Operations, Baruch College, CUNY and John Denham, DenhamWolf.

BLOGGER NOTE: WERE YOU THERE? IF SO, WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD YOUR NOTES FROM THE SESSION TO OUR BLOG? Contact Beth Evans, bevans at brooklyn dot cuny dot edu and Beth will be happy to include your notes in the LACUNY blog.

Greening Libraries / Greener Communities (2) – Morning Panel – Binns, Van Der Laan, Servaes

The LACUNY Institute “Greening Libraries ==> Greener Communities” was held on Friday, October 31, 2008 at the Bronx Library Center, a branch of the New York Public Library. The conference was co-sponsored by the Library Association of the City University of New York and the New York Public Library. It received support from the New York Library Club, Springer, EBSCO and BUSCA.

The second half of the morning offered a panel on the greening of the book. Clay Williams, conference co-chair, introduced Brita Servaes. Servaes, convener of the “Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) Green Libraries Special Interest Group, served as moderator. Panelists included Shannon Binns from the Green Press Initiative (GPI) and Andrew Van Der Laan, Director, Senior Project Manager Publishing Operations Projects Group, Random House (RH).

Binns noted that the primary goals of the GPI are to minimize the impact of deforestation and to encourage environmental stewardship in the book industry. Books are and have been a great way to preserve knowledge but are a threat to our environment. The production of one book releases nine pounds of carbon into the air. The U. S. need for books consumes in trees the equivalent of 1000 plus Central Parks each year. Forest conversion to tree plantations after old-growth forests are cut down does not produce new forests that function as the older ones did. Pesticides are heavily used and few of the original species return to these woods. Loss of frontier and old growth forest around the globe has been dramatic. Only 20 % of the original Canadian boreal forest (known as North America’s Amazon) remains. Inhabitants of the boreal forest include 500 indigenous communities and 40 bird species. Canada is being logged at a rate of 2.5 million acres per year and most is going for use in the U. S. paper industry. This is the same rate that the Amazon was being logged in 1980’s. In another part of the world, Indonesia, most of pulp export goes to China and Korea. Sixty-five per cent of the logging is illegal. Binns sees all of this as presenting a conservation opportunity.

So how is deforestation leading to climate change? Binns explained that the clearing of trees leads to 25% of greenhouse gases released into the environment. Paper manufacturing also creates greenhouse gases. Binns showed a pie chart divided into areas of paper production and the global climate impact of each. The biggest contributor to the production of greenhouse gas is the loss of bio mass. The solution GPI recommends is that publishers use more recycled paper. The Forest Stewardship Certification program assures that more paper fiber is produced in a sustainable manner. Binns also encouraged attendees to reduce their energy use and conserve more. Consider also switching to more sustainable technologies and purchasing carbon credits. Libraries should have a policy that will help them to reach their environmental goals. Binns sees signs of change. The book industry has responded favorably to the Treatise on Responsible Paper Use. Binns encourages librarians to sign the Treatise and also ask their vendors to sign it. The recent Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts: Findings from the U.S. Book Industry survey shows that a majority of publishers have environmental policies in place.

Andrew Van Der Laan of Random House, the second panel speaker, proudly noted that 30% of RH titles are printed on recycled paper. Van Der Lann works on vendor and print issues. RH has 100 plus imprints and 20,000 authors. The speaker gave a quick historical tour of book publishing from the beginning of the Gutenberg press, the paper making machines of the 1930’s, and the long-retained policy established by Simon and Schuster to take back returns from book stores. Van der Lann sees this policy, though beneficial to small presses, as having wrecked havoc on the environment. Thirty per cent of books are returned. The evolution of paperbacks, symbolized by Gertrude the Kangaroo, Pocket Books colophone, also has had a detrimental effect of the environment. Ebooks, perhaps seen as a panacea for the problem of printed publishing, currently account for only half a per cent of book sales.

Van Der Laan reminded the audience that publishers do not care about the environment. People do. The way to get publishers to care is to turn green to gold. Publishers need to see how they can make money by using sustainable practices. Only 100 people at RH are involved in championing sustainability so it’s a challenging job.

Striking statistics illustrated the presentation. How much paper does RH use? One hundred thousand tons a year, or 30 pounds of paper for each New York City resident. The book industry uses five per cent of all paper used. Product transport accounts for 63 % of non-paper greenhouse gas emissions. But 70 % plus of the industry’s GHG production comes from the harvesting and creating of paper. Because books are a consumer product., Van Der Laan encouraged the audience to consider its own carbon footprint when it buys not only books but other products as well. Van Der Laan suggested that the audience visit Climate Cooler to see how their own buying habits can impact on the environment. He noted that carbon footprint calculators are major google hits when one searches “carbon footprint.” Clearly, people want to know how to change their habits to lessen the impact on the environment.

Van Der Laan commented that for what they do, books do it pretty well. One slide demonstrated the RH initiatives that are small and large in scope: everything from what is done in the cafeteria to their environmental paper initiative. RH has shown that not only are these efforts good for the environment but they also save cost.

The troubled economy cannot be ignored in a discussion about sustainable practices. Is investing in environmental paper worth the loss of an employee? RH’s track record shows 300,000 trees saved in 2007 at no extra cost. RH offices occupy the second, pre-existing New York City building to get LEED certification. Practices such as collecting technotrash and changing the lightbulbs in warehouses have led to this distinction. RH chairs a book industry environmental council which is making efforts to align the environmental concerns of different industries. Van Der Laan reminds us that as the publishing industry moves away from forest use we must be cautious that it not be used for other environmentally detrimental purposes.

The audience was concerned with whether or not initiatives from the GPI and RH are slowing deforestation. At this time, what GPI and RH have done, admittedly, is only having a minuscule impact.

The very library-specific issue of balancing the cost of a book vs. the lifespan of the book came up. Libraries often find themselves deciding between buying cheaper books that may need to be thrown away and replaced (or not) and with buying more costly books. Print-on-Demand, naturally, came into the conversation. Van Der Laan sees the technology as promising but young.

An audience member had a questions specifically for GPI, suggesting that GPI could be using its branding more effectively. Binns said that using the logo can be tricky because a publisher may have products of a mixed nature.

A hope for the future includes the recent U.S. emendation of the Lacey Act which protects endangered species. For the paper industry, this means that paper and wood products will show the country of origin and tree species used in production.

A site recommended for further examination is the Environmental Paper Network.

Greening Libraries / Greener Communities (1) – Morning Keynote – Fred Stoss

The LACUNY Institute “Greening Libraries ==> Greener Communities” was held on Friday, October 31, 2008 at the Bronx Library Center, a branch of the New York Public Library. The conference was co-sponsored by the Library Association of the City University of New York and the New York Public Library.   It received support from the New York Library Club, Springer, EBSCO and BUSCA.

Registration, opportunities for mingling, coffee and Dunkin Donuts, donated by the local shop at Kingsbridge Road and East Fordham Road (thank you DD’s!) greeted the crowd of nearly 150 librarians and others on the lower level of the newly built, silver-LEED certified public library building.

Beth Evans, LACUNY President, welcomed the conference attendees with references to Halloween and a warning that the topic of the day might be “disturbing informative,” the motto of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. Rita Ormsby, conference committee member, menu organizer and composter extraordinaire then introduced Fred Stoss who gave the opening keynote.

Stoss is an Associate Librarian (Biological Sciences) in the Science and Engineering Library at the University at Buffalo. He was trained by Al Gore and The Climate Project to give presentations of Gore’s slide show. Many have seen the show in Gore’s award-winning documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, or learned its lesson in Gore’s book of the same title. Stoss’s presentation resembled, in part, Gore’s film, but for the librarians in the audience, Stoss had something special to offer. For instance, the audience learned that the book An Inconvenient Truth may be the second most influential environmental book since Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring. Additionally, Scholastic has published a version of the book for children.

The film, An Inconvenient Truth is known for its data and graphs. Stoss offered one of his own graphs showing how book and article retrieval on the topic “global warming” has been on a steady rise for the past decade and has shown spikes during presidential election years.

Stoss described the story of global warming as a four act play. He pointed to recent examples of dramatic climate change and its dire consequences. Exponential population growth and changes in technology are much to blame. Librarians were put on their guard to expect spikes in searches on the term “environmental refugee.” Moreover, according to Stoss, innocent victims of global warming are not the only ones on the run. Elected officials have been evading the truth of the science that spells an unfortunate future.

Everyday examples of products and their surprisingly long-reaching carbon footprints enlivened the presentation. Stoss pointed to the cost to the environment of producing Walkers Crisps, the British potato chip. Eleven million bags per day exhales 890 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Michael Specter also targets this chip in his well-known, March 2008 New Yorker article, Big Foot. Stoss referenced the article. Scientist and librarian Stoss offered the shopper some comfort to help them wash down the carbon-sticker shock of the chips. He notes that here are good guys, too, on the supermarket shelves. Consider buying beer from the Brooklyn Brewery which generates its own wind power.

The presentation pushed, in the end, to motivate the audience to affect change, to find “the will to do it.” Stoss encouraged libraries to incorporate sustainability into their mission statements and to reach out to the community and elected officials to see the library as a source of data for achieving sustainability goals locally. The library will always be suitable as a venue for teaching good green practices through book displays (Stoss has slides that suggest a number of popular titles), exhibits and lectures. Like any good librarian, Stoss suggested links and sources for further study including those for:

http://apolloalliance.org

“The Apollo Alliance is a coalition of business, labor, environmental, and community leaders working to catalyze a clean energy revolution in America to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil, cut the carbon emissions that are destabilizing our climate, and expand opportunities for American businesses and workers.”

http://coolcities.us/

From the Sierra Club, “Solving Global Warming, One City at a Time.”

http://www.greenlibrarianbozeman.blogspot.com/

Catherine McMullen’s blog

http://www.libraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=contentinfodetail&articleid=CA6599608

Library Journal Design Institute

http://www.cphlibrary.org/documents/about/environmental-flyer.pdf

Clifton Park Halfmoon Library, an exemplary “green” library

http://www.nyserda.org/About/default.asp

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) “focuses solely on research and development with the goal of reducing the State’s petroleum consumption.”

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/rts/srrt/tfoe/lbsc/librariesbuild.cfm

ALA site for Libraries Build Sustainable Communities

A question and answer session followed Stoss’s presentation. One audience member was concerned about the possible conflict in building green vs. complying with fire codes. Stoss urged libraries that, despite a tendency to “do it yourself” when it comes to greening a building, be sure to bring in experts or be sure to follow code when making renovations.

There was some discussion about measuring the green value of using older preservation methods (such as microfilm) vs. the move towards electronic preservation. Which is more ecologically friendly? The cost of producing the electricity to allow the viewing of electronic resources needs to be taken into account when examining the environmental cost of producing paper or other preservation media.

Finally, Stoss suggested that there may be entrepreneurial opportunities in going green that could be most effective if libraries work together.

2008 LACUNY Travel Grant Recipients

On behalf of the LACUNY Professional Development Committee, I am pleased to announce the recipients of the 2008 LACUNY Travel Grants. This award of $500 is made to a LACUNY member to support travel to a library-related conference or meeting. This year two awards have been made:

David Brodherson, Baruch College, Art Libraries Society of North America Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, May 2008

Beth Evans, Brooklyn College, Off-campus Library Services Conference, Salt Lake City, UT, April 2008

Congratulations, David and Beth!

March 17 is officially LACUNY’s Founders’ Day

LACUNY Executive Council approved a resolution to recognize March 17 as LACUNY’s Founders’ Day. resolution-on-founder.doc

While some of you may dress in green this day and another librarian with the initials S.S. from York College will be celebrating his birthday, LACUNY librarians have much to be proud of, as the organization will soon be celebrating its 70th anniversary as a professional organization.

In commemoration of this LACUNY designated holiday, I invite you to share little-known facts about some aspect of LACUNY history by adding a comment to this blog post (click here to do it).

LACUNY Instruction Committee event: Rethinking Relevance

At the request of Robert Farell, one of the co-chairs of the LACUNY Instruction Committee, I am passing along the details about a March 21 event.

Library Association of the City University of New York (LACUNY)
Instruction Committee Spring Program

“Rethinking Relevance – Technology and Pedagogical Points of View”
(FREE REGISTRATION)

Keynote Speaker:

Tom Eland
Chair of Information Studies, Minnesota Community and Technical College

Respondents:

Deborah Richman, Vice President, Collarity (Palo Alto, CA)
Ann Grafstein, Coordinator of Library Instruction, Hofstra University
Jeff Gutkin, Director of Academic Computing, Wagner College

When:

Friday, March 21, 2008 — 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
(Lunch will be provided following event)

Where:

Borough of Manhattan Community College
Richard Harris Terrace (main entrance level)
199 Chambers St.
New York, New York 10007

Mr. Eland will be speaking on how technology has impacted the role of librarians as “disciplinary discourse mediators.”

Mr. Eland is chair of his institution’s Information Studies department and is known for having one of the most developed and innovative information literacy programs in the country. Mr. Eland teaches liberal arts classes in Information Studies that critically analyze the claims of information society advocates; the role of the mass media, the alternative press, and dissident groups and ideas in shaping American society; and the history of ideas and print culture. He also teaches classes in, and coordinates, the MCTC Library Information Technology degree program.

Respondents include:

Deborah Richman, Vice President, Collarity (www.collarity.com)
Currently working in the area of search development at Collarity, a Palo Alto based social search engine developer, Ms. Richman is also a regular contributor to the website Search Engine Watch. She has been employed with Looksmart, and About.com among other companies and recently presented a paper at the 2007 Special Libraries Association Conference entitled “Social Search Comes of Age.”

Ann Grafstein, Coordinator of Library Instruction, Hofstra University
Ms. Grafstein (MLS, University of Western Ontario, Ph.D., McGill University) is the Coordinator of Library Instruction at Hofstra University. She has spoken on information literacy at scholarly conferences, and was an invited speaker at the 4th Annual Scientific Symposium in Frankfurt, Germany in 2004. Her article “A Discipline-Based Approach to Information Literacy” that appeared in the Journal of Academic Librarianship in 2002 received the 2004 ACRL Instruction Section Publication Award. Her article entitled “Information Literacy and Technology: An Examination of Some Issues” was published in portal: Libraries and the Academy in 2007.

Jeff Gutkin, Director of Academic Computing, Wagner College.
Previously he was the Instructional Design Librarian for Wagner College’s Horrmann Library. Having received his MLS from Queens College GSLIS, he is currently completing a PhD in Educational Psychology, with a focus in Learning, Development and Instruction at the CUNY Graduate Center and an “Interactive Technology and Pedagogy” certificate under the direction of Stephen Brier. He is also the production editor of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Library Instruction Round Table Newsletter.

RSVP by Friday, March 14 to:
Elizabeth Namei
email: enamei@lagcc.cuny.edu
phone: 718-482-6019

Revamping the Look of LACUNY Blog

Please pardon the loose seams, as this blog is being recut and resewn. It should be ready for the runway very soon.

EPA Library Closings – Leslie Burger Will Speak to National Advisory Council

Leslie Burger is the invited speaker for LACUNY’S Winter Meeting on Dec. 8.
______________________________
American Library Association
Washington Office Newsline
ALAWON
Volume 15, Number 121
December 7, 2006

________________________________
ALA President Leslie Burger to Speak on EPA Library Closings at
National Advisory Council Meeting
________________________________

PRESS RELEASE
WASHINGTON – On December 14, ALA President Leslie Burger will speak at
a meeting of the National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and
Technology (NACEPT) on the impact of Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) library closings.

The $2 million budget cut that brings about these closings – initially
proposed by the EPA and included in President Bush’s budget proposals
for Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 – reduces the 35-year-old EPA Library
Network’s budget by 80 percent and forces closure of several regional
libraries.

“The closure of these EPA libraries has given rise to grave concern in
the library, science, and environmental communities,” Burger said.
“Public access to vital environmental information needs to remain
open, and the skilled librarians within those libraries need to remain on
hand in order to assist scientists and the public in accessing those
materials.

“I will share the concerns of librarians across the country – not to
mention scientists and those who care about the environment – to this
Council meeting,” Burger continued. “I will make it clear just how
important these libraries and their respective librarians are.”
The meeting will be held on December 14 and 15, 2006, at The Madison
Hotel, 1777 15th Street NW, Washington, DC, 20005, and Burger is
scheduled to speak on December 14 at 12:30 p.m. The meeting is open to
the public, with limited seating on a first-come, first-served basis.

#

EPA established the National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy
and Technology (NACEPT) in 1988 to provide independent advice to the
EPA Administrator on a broad range of environmental policy, technology and
management issues. Council members include senior leaders and experts
who represent academia, business and industry, community and
environmental advocacy groups, environmental justice organizations,
professional organizations, and state, local, and tribal governments.

________________________________

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