The NOAA Library is the flagship library of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ) is an American scientific and regulatory agency charged with Weather forecasting, forecasting weather, monitoring oceanic and atmospheric conditions, Hydrography, charting the seas, ...
’s (NOAA) network of over 20 research libraries. It is also a selective
federal depository library
The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is a government program created to make U.S. federal government publications available to the public at no cost. there are 1,114 depository libraries in the United States and its territories. A "go ...
for United States
federal government
A federation (also called a federal state) is an entity characterized by a political union, union of partially federated state, self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a #Federal governments, federal government (federalism) ...
publications.
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Location
The NOAA 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 train 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 syste ...
.
History
In 1970, with the formation of NOAA, the libraries of the National Weather Service
The National Weather Service (NWS) is an Government agency, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weathe ...
, United States Coast and Geodetic Survey
The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey ( USC&GS; known as the Survey of the Coast from 1807 to 1836, and as the United States Coast Survey from 1836 until 1878) was the first scientific agency of the Federal government of the United State ...
, and Bureau of Commercial Fisheries of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS or FWS) is a List of federal agencies in the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of the Interior which oversees the management of fish, wildlife, ...
(which became NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), informally known as NOAA Fisheries, is a United States federal agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that is responsible for the ste ...
(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 Government agency, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weathe ...
library, itself descended from the United States Signal Corps library.
The library was previously located in Rockville, Maryland just northwest of Old Georgetown Road 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 area, unincorporated, it is an edge city with a population of 81,015 at the 2020 ...
. 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 observation
Surface weather observations are the fundamental data used for safety as well as climatological reasons to forecast weather and issue warnings worldwide. They can be taken manually, by a weather observer, by computer through the use of automat ...
s 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 image hosting service, image and Online video platform, 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 previously a co ...
account.
Role within data digitization
The NOAA 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.
In 2015, the NCDC merged with two other ...
(NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina
Asheville ( ) is a city in Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. Located at the confluence of the French Broad River, French Broad and Swannanoa River, Swannanoa rivers, it is the county seat of Buncombe County. It is the most populou ...
. 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 technique ...
'' 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 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