NOAA Central Library

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Library
NOAA Library front doors
38°59′33″N77°01′47″W / 38.992491267170934°N 77.02982601409487°W / 38.992491267170934; -77.02982601409487
Location	1315 East-West Highway SSMC3 2nd Floor Silver Spring, Maryland 20910, United States of America
Type	Government science library
Established	1970
Branch of	Department of Commerce
Access and use
Access requirements	Members of the public must contact the library in advance to access materials.
Population served	NOAA employees and affiliates, general public
Other information
Director	Ben Hope
Website	http://library.noaa.gov/

The NOAA Library is one of a network of nine libraries serving as the primary information hub for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). ^{[1] [2]}

History

In 1970, with the formation of NOAA, the libraries of the National Weather Service, United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, and Bureau of Commercial Fisheries of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (which became NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)) merged to become the NOAA Central library. ^[3]

Part of the NOAA Central library collection is from the former United States Weather Bureau 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. Its website was established in 1995.

Patrons

NOAA employees and affiliates have full access to the library's e-resources and physical holdings. Members of the public can access the library in Silver Spring by arranging their visit in advance. ^[4]

Contents

The library subscribes to thousands of peer-reviewed journals in print and electronic formats, ^[5] and maintains the institutional repository containing NOAA's digital publications. ^[6] It also holds works and artifacts pertaining to the history of NOAA.

• 
  NOAA Central Library stacks

Role within data digitization

The NOAA Library has worked extensively with the National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina. Projects have included digitizing foreign climate data books, the United States Daily Weather Map series, and Monthly Weather Review articles. ^[7] Researchers at the library from the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC, now the Weather Prediction Center or WPC) also digitized the library's microfilm North American and Northern Hemispheric map collections, originally created by the National Meteorological Center (NMC). ^[8]

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. ^[9]

References

1. "Vision & Mission: NOAA Library". NOAA Library. Retrieved 2025-11-05.
2. "Library Locations: Directory". NOAA Library. Retrieved 2025-11-05.
3. "Climate Database Modernization Program | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) formerly known as National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)". www.ncdc.noaa.gov. Retrieved 2016-09-30.
4. "Use the Library". NOAA Library. Retrieved 2025-11-05.
5. "Journal Finder: Subscribed Titles". NOAA Library. Retrieved 2025-11-05.
6. "NOAA Institutional Repository" . Retrieved 2017-07-27.
7. National Climatic Data Center (2008-08-22). "CDMP NOAA Tasks". National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Archived from the original on 2013-02-22. Retrieved 2012-04-26.
8. National Centers for Environmental Prediction (January 2012). "HPC Scanning". NCEP Quarterly Newsletter. No. 4. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration . Retrieved 2012-04-26.
9. Access America Awards (2000-03-06). "Federal Libraries and Information Centers, Librarians and Technicians Win FLICC Awards". Cyber Cemetery. Retrieved 2012-04-27.

External links

• NOAA Library
• NOAA Digital Photo Collection