Lois Ireland, Garcia Consulting

This electronic tour is by Lois Ireland, who in the fall of 1997, when this interview was made,was working for Garcia Consulting as a government contractor at the U.S. EnvironmentalProtection Agency (EPA) Information Resources Center (IRC) in Washington D.C.

The IRC provides information support to EPA staff in the Washington, DC area, which includes traditional special library services, such as ILL, online searching and reference assistance. The IRC also provides services to the general public, primarily in locating EPA and other environmental information. Public access issues have been a primary concern within the EPA during the tenure of the Clinton Administration, with its emphasis on reinventing government and increased standards of customer service for public sector organizations. In past years, the IRC's main focus was on serving its EPA customers; now the focus is more divided, with the expectation that the IRC can and will handle requests from both groups. The EPA has contracted or outsourced its library operations to Garcia Consulting, Inc.

The IRC utilizes commercial online services, such as Dialog, and Lexis/Nexis to locate full-text articles and literature citations. Staff also heavily use the Internet to locate materials for EPA staff, and search the EPA site to assist public users. EPA does have an Intranet; the IRC has an Intranet page, with access to commercial search services, and electronic forms for staff to use for ILL and search requests.

As site manager for the IRC, my duties include oversight of the project as a whole, ensuring that all tasks and projects are completed on time, daily management of the IRC, coordination of budgets and costs with the EPA project officers, personnel management, including hiring, and training. Because the IRC is in the headquarters of EPA, the focus of the collection is more oriented towards the policy and "social" aspects of environmental protection, so general reference course work provided me with a broad overview of a wide variety of sources. This has been somewhat more useful than the sci-tech reference classes; however, there are EPA libraries that are affiliated with laboratories where the science background will be more valuable. Library school did not prepare me for working in an outsourced environment, dealing with essentially two bosses, my EPA client and my Garcia Consulting, Inc. management.

Information prepared by EPA is in the public domain, so there are no real copyright issues involved in making that information available, either in hard copy or electronically. Often, we have to educate EPA staff on copyright laws, and why they cannot simple copy an entire newsletter that the IRC subscribes to.

Because of the slimness of budgets, resource sharing is critical. The IRC is part of the network of 28 EPA libraries, and all network libraries are the other's first line of defense in trying to obtain an interlibrary loan. Other reciprocal agreements have been established with other federal libraries, and academic libraries in the DC area. We also utilize commercial document delivery services to supplement the ILL function, for those more difficult to find items. In the past year, staff have had incredible success in using the Internet to track down items or the authors - authors will often provide gratis copies of their publications upon request. This has really help provide another avenue for locating materials not held by the IRC.

The IRC is currently outsourced and has been since the mid-1980's, and all staff work for the contractor, although we work on site at the EPA main building. The contract was awarded for 5 years, after which time it will be recompeted. Our EPA client provides us with a task plan at the beginning of each fiscal year, essentially a list of projects and tasks they want us to work on. We provide a detailed description of how we will meet those tasks. As contractors, we can only provide recommendations for purchases and acquisitions, but on a positive note, the client recognizes our expertise and when funds are available, will move forward on those recommendations.

We are looking more at implementing electronic resources that can be accessed from the desktop of employees. Prices of these services are coming down to a large extent and vendors are willing to work with us to come up with a package that is attractive. Last year, we looked at what was being spent on online resources and realized that needs had changed and a service we were paying $15K for was not being utilized. We approached the EPA management about shifting that money to pay for an alternative system that would provide access to environmental and pollution management databases via the Internet. We made the case that we weren't asking for more money, just recommending that it be allocated to resources that would be used more and provide more bang for the buck.

While in library school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I was an intern at the EPA lab library in Research Triangle Park, NC. This internship sparked interest in my resume when I applied for my position, since I already had some experience with EPA. Job hunting advice: be specific on your resume but not overly detailed. New graduates rarely have enough experience to fill 3+ pages of a resume. Include internships and practicums.

Our contract specifies at least one year of library experience for new hires. We can consider internships, practicums or non-professional experience, but applicants must have that year and the MLS before we can consider them. I find that applicants with some experience have a more realistic idea of what work will be like. I don't find that subject specialization is necessary - we have very few employees with a science or environmental background. I look for someone who is willing and interested in learning a new area, and since we don't deal specifically with sci-tech issues, a more general background has much value.

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