IFPTE Responds to NASA Administrator Isaacman's Misleading and Misguided Explanation for Closing NASA's Largest Research Library
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WASHINGTON DC — The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), a labor union representing over 34,000 civil servants – including thousands of scientists, engineers, and professional staff at four NASA Centers and NASA Headquarters – and several thousands of private sector aerospace engineering and technical professionals, responded to NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman’s misleading and misguided explanation for the closing of NASA’s largest research library, which was located at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
IFPTE President Matt Biggs:
“I want to chalk up NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman misguided explanation for the closing of NASA’s research library at the Goddard Space Center to his being new to the job and to the poor advice that he has received from his staff. His public statement regarding the library, released on X, is patently false and must be challenged.
The rapid and haphazard shutdown of the library at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, reported on by The New York Times, decimated this valuable collection housed at NASA’s largest research library. This was not part of some “long-planned facilities consolidation” as Isaacman claims. The Goddard Master Plan, written in 2022, does not call for the library’s closure. Building 21, which houses the library, was scheduled for renovation, not elimination.
Isaacman goes on to say that “NASA researchers will continue to have access to the scientific information and resources they need to do their work.” That’s simply not true. Much of the material that was available in the library in Greenbelt, Maryland, is copyrighted or unique out-of-print material that cannot or has not been digitized and will no longer be available to researchers.
The Goddard facility was a central site for collections from other NASA libraries. The most recent additions have come from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and the NASA headquarters libraries.
NASA’s press secretary Bethany Stevens went beyond Isaacman’s X statement, again describing the library shutdown as a “consolidation, not a closure.” Where is the consolidation? The material is not being consolidated with other holdings; it is simply being lost to Goddard and to the broader research community, much of it is being sent to storage or to the dumpster.
NASA’s scientists and engineers shouldn’t have to be dumpster divers to do their work. We expect better from NASA and its managers. The American public and the scientific community beyond also expect and should demand that NASA work to expand our knowledge of space, science, and engineering, and not to contract it. “
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The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers represents 90,000 highly skilled workers in both the public and private sectors. IFPTE is NASA’s largest union, representing 8,000 workers at the space agency. The union is affiliated with the AFL-CIO. More information can be found at www.IFPTE.org.
Contact: Jamie Horwitz
202-549-4921, jhdcpr@starpower.net