senators Boxer, & Inhofe and the EPA libraires.-----testy exchange

[rodeodance]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/07/MNGR1O07N51.DTL
Boxer and Johnson got into a testy exchange over the EPA's closure of its libraries.

Johnson called it an effort to modernize the libraries now that many people are accessing agency data and scientific reports on the Internet. He said the reports kept in the libraries either would be made available online or would be donated to other libraries.

But Boxer read e-mails from EPA librarians that detailed the destruction of agency reports and other documents.

"There's something about Americans, they don't like things being destroyed -- libraries, books, movies, things like that," Boxer said. "The image of it is discomforting."

"We have not been disposing of documents," insisted Johnson, who noted that the agency halted plans to close more libraries because of the outcry.

But Johnson received a little help from Republicans on the committee. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the panel's ranking Republican, accused critics of the EPA's library plan of being "hysterical" and motivated by the desire to save a few union jobs. .......

[Igel]

1. They're probably both right--

documents are being destroyed, but not disposed of.

I've pitched many boxes of books and photocopies into the dumpster in the last year or so (with some put in a campus recycle bin, and some books distributed to colleagues).

But while they've been destroyed or no longer are in our apartment, they also all now sit on a hard drive my wife and I share on our intranet, with backups on DVDs in Houston and Phoenix.

I eventually hope to have our 10 bookcases reduced to a more reasonable number, the dozen boxes of books gone, and the boxes and filing cabinets of photocopies emptied.