Thursday, February 14, 2002

An Order to Destroy a CD-ROM Raises Concerns Among University Librarians By ALEX P. KELLOGG College librarians who were forced by the federal government to destroy copies of a CD-ROM put out by the United States Geological Survey say destruction of the disks raises concerns about intellectual freedom. The government said the CD's, which compiled information on water supplies, posed a security risk in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. In October the government ordered 335 libraries holding copies of the CD-ROM destroy them. The majority of the libraries were on college campuses, in law schools, and at community colleges. The order was sent by the U.S. Government Printing Office, which distributes publications to libraries that participate in the Federal Depository Library Program. The order asked libraries to destroy copies of a CD-ROM publication titled "Source-Area Characteristics of Large Public Surface-Water Supplies in the Conterminous United States: An Information Resource for Source-Water Assessment, 1999." According to officials at the printing office, the geological survey deemed information in the document too sensitive for public access. Copies of the CD-ROM, like all Federal Depository documents, are the property of the U.S. government. A spokeswoman for the American Library Association, a nonprofit organization of libraries and librarians, said the request "was a major issue of concern for the ALA." The ALA's code of ethics states that libraries should "resist all efforts to censor library resources." "This is part of a bigger issue of restriction of access to government information on the Web and elsewhere," said the spokeswoman, Patrice McDermott. She added that a number of government agencies had been removing information from their Web sites since September 11. Copies of the CD-ROM on water supplies were sent to libraries in the fall of 1999 and had been openly available for two years. Until the request for their destruction was sent out, they had also been available for purchase from the USGS's Information Services Office in Denver. "Generally speaking, things don't go into the Federal Depository Library Program if they pose national-security issues," said Ruth Parlin, director of the Calvin Coolidge Library at Castleton State College in Castleton, Vt., which was one of the libraries told to destroy its copy of the document. That federal officials would permit distribution of a document "that they would later decide is a threat ... is problematic," she said. "It does show you how vulnerable access to information can be sometimes." Ms. Parlin, like other campus-library directors, said the request was the first she had ever received to return or destroy a document because of its sensitive content. She said she had previously been asked to return or destroy a document because information was either inaccurate, outdated, or had been superseded by new information. "It raises some concern," said Mary Jane Walsh, head of government documents, maps, and microforms at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. But she added, "Legally, I had no choice." Ms. Walsh, who contacted the U.S. Geological Survey before carrying out the request, said she believed that this would be the last request of its kind from the federal government. Andrew M. Sherman, a spokesman for the U.S. Government Printing Office, said that the request was unusual and that the agency sympathized with the concern the request had raised among campus librarians. "We certainly understand the principle of public access to information, and we certainly understand the sensitivity to this action," he said. Although a complete list of colleges and universities that had to destroy copies of the document was not available Wednesday, he said that affected institutions included the California Institute of Technology; Duke, Northwestern, Stanford, and Yale Universities; the State University of New York at Buffalo; and the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. According to Mr. Sherman, approximately 67 percent of the 1,300 libraries that participate in the Federal Depository Library Program are academic libraries. Of the 1,300, only 335 had received the document in question. He said that this was the first such request he had heard of. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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