Library & Clearinghouse
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The Library and Clearinghouse at WMRC specializes in the science of waste management, which makes it a resource that is unique in the nation. The Library's print collection includes industry case studies and information on pollution practices, sustainable development, and household hazardous waste. The Library's holdings include thousands of books, articles, maps, reports, and periodicals. In FY 2004, the Library also began collecting environmental education materials to support WMRC's increasing efforts in this area.
The Library's staff continues to add holdings to OCLC, a national shared bibliographic database, making the collection available for loan to libraries throughout the country. The Library's periodical holdings have been in OCLC since the 1990's.
In FY 2004, the WMRC Library joined twenty libraries from the Lincoln Trail Libraries System in a Questionpoint cooperative profile. The "MyLibrarian" virtual reference service went online in August 2003. It is available through the WMRC Library's Web site or at http://www.mylibrarian.info/.
Last year, the WMRC Library staff responded to nearly 500 information requests from clients. In addition, library staff added 392 books and videos, seven serials, and 770 articles to the library's collection. The Library staff also continued to add records for Web sites and online documents to the library's catalog.
The Clearinghouse consists of reports from research projects funded by the Center, pollution prevention fact sheets and brochures, and other environmental information from around the world. The Clearinghouse distributed 1,749 publications last year on topics ranging from household hazardous waste to mercury and pollution prevention in schools. WMRC continues to make its research and technical reports available electronically. During FY 2004, 12,635 WMRC reports and fact sheets were viewed on the Web site. In FY 2005, the Center plans to move to electronic-only distribution of its research reports.
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