Coastal Services Center

If you are looking for information about a coast-related topic, it makes sense to include the NOAA Coastal Services Center's library in your search. This library was designed with the coastal resource manager in mind, and contains thousands of items that focus on coastal issues.

"Library holdings are listed in the on-line catalog accessible through our web site," says Janine Devereaux, head librarian for the Center. "We can provide most of these items to coastal managers through the interlibrary loan program in which we mail publications to a library near the manager."

The Center's collection includes reference and general resources, journals and newsletters, CD-ROMs, and videos. To make the search for current articles as comprehensive as possible, the library subscribes to a variety of databases, including Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts, Marine Literature Review, and Environmental Abstracts. The library also subscribes to The Environmental Library, which provides full text of federal and environmental laws.

For historical documents, the Center acquired one of the most extensive collections in the country, the Coastal Zone Information Center (CZIC) collection. Coastal resource managers on a federal and state level will appreciate the contents of this collection, because it is comprised of the reports and documents submitted to NOAA from states and territories as part of the federal granting process. This collection dates back to 1972, and contains over 15,000 documents.

The information in this collection can help coastal resource managers understand the historical perspective of many initiatives and gives interested parties an easy way to access documents from other states. A majority of these documents have never been cataloged by a library and thus have not been readily available. Cataloging the CZIC collection and making the catalog accessible through the Internet is a top priority for the Center's library. This effort is expected to take two years to complete. Future plans include making selected state-produced coastal reports available on-line in full text to ensure greater access to this valuable material.

While the information available from the Center is vast, users can stretch their search beyond the Center from the library's home page. Other coastal libraries, several NOAA libraries, and many databases from throughout the country are accessible through the Center's web address. The Pacific Marine Environmental Library, the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, and NOAA's National Oceanographic Data Center and Climate Diagnostic Center are a few examples.

"The Internet has changed the way libraries provide information," says Devereaux. "We plan to take full advantage of it to support the coastal resource manager."

Devereaux says she is always looking for ways to expand the Center's collection and to connect with other pertinent databases and information resources. She invites coastal resource managers to contact the library with their questions, suggestions, and information on their libraries and databases.

The NOAA Coastal Services Center library's web address is http://www.csc.noaa.gov/library. To call Janine Devereaux, phone (843) 740-1247, or e-mail her at library@csc.noaa.gov.