The NOAA Central Library is the flagship library of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...
’s (NOAA) network of over 20 research libraries. It is also a selective
federal depository library for United States
federal government publications.
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Location
The NOAA Central Library is located on the second floor of NOAA Building III on the Silver Spring Metro Center campus, near the Silver Spring Metro station
A metro station or subway station is a station for a rapid transit system, which as a whole is usually called a "metro" or "subway". A station provides a means for passengers to purchase tickets, board trains, and evacuate the system in the ...
.
History
In 1970, with the formation of NOAA, the libraries of the National Weather Service
The National Weather Service (NWS) is an agency of the United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weather-related products to organizations and the public for the ...
, the Coast Survey, and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) merged to become the NOAA Central library.
Part of the NOAA Central library collection is from the former United States Weather Bureau
The National Weather Service (NWS) is an agency of the United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weather-related products to organizations and the public for the ...
library, itself descended from the United States Signal Corps library.
The library was previously located in Rockville, Maryland just northwest of Old Georgetown Road
Maryland Route 187 (MD 187) is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. Known as Old Georgetown Road, the highway runs from MD 355 and MD 410 in Bethesda north to Executive Boulevard in North Bethesda. MD 187 is a four- to six-lane high ...
until 1993, when it moved to its current location in Silver Spring, Maryland
Silver Spring is a census-designated place (CDP) in southeastern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, near Washington, D.C. Although officially unincorporated, in practice it is an edge city, with a population of 81,015 at the 2020 ce ...
. Its website was established in 1995.
Patrons
NOAA employees have full access to the library’s e-resources and physical holdings. Visiting scientists, contracted labor, and other NOAA affiliates can gain access through their federal supervisor. Members of the public can access the library by calling in advance. The library is open from 8:30 am through 4:30 pm, Monday through Friday, and is closed on federal holidays.
Contents
The library subscribes to over one thousand peer-reviewed journals in print and electronic formats, and is the official repository of all NOAA publications. It also holds works and artifacts pertaining to the history of NOAA. Its microfilm collection includes decades of surface weather observations and surface weather analyses from the United States and Japan.
NOAA Central Library Stacks 3.jpg, NOAA Central Library stacks
NOAA Central Library Stacks 2.jpg, NOAA Central Library stacks
NOAA Central Library Stacks 1.jpg, NOAA Central Library stacks
The library maintains an online photo collection of over 30,000 images taken by NOAA staff. Some of those images are also hosted on the NOAA Flickr
Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and profession ...
account.
Role within data digitization
The NOAA Central Library has been active within the Climate Digital Modernization Program (CDMP), which is headquartered at the National Climatic Data Center
The United States National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), previously known as the National Weather Records Center (NWRC), in Asheville, North Carolina, was the world's largest active archive of weather data. Starting as a tabulation unit in New Or ...
(NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina. Projects have included digitizing foreign climate data books, the United States Daily Weather Map series, and ''Monthly Weather Review
The ''Monthly Weather Review'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Meteorological Society. It covers research related to analysis and prediction of observed and modeled circulations of the atmosphere, including techniq ...
'' articles. Researchers at the library from the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC, now the Weather Prediction Center
The Weather Prediction Center (WPC), located in College Park, Maryland, is one of nine service centers under the umbrella of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), a part of the National Weather Service (NWS), which in turn is ...
or WPC) are digitizing the library's microfilm North American and Northern Hemispheric map collections, originally created by the National Meteorological Center (NMC).
Awards
In 1999 the NOAA Central Library organized over 500 NOAA websites under a single locator and created a significant digital image library of meteorological images from the 1800s to the 1950s, which won the Federal Library and Information Center Committee award.
References
External links
NOAA Central Library
NOAA photo library
NOAA photo library on Flickr
{{Authority control
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Research libraries in the United States