Library 101

• Who we serve
• Becoming a library patron
• What we have
• Accessing electronic materials from your NOAA computer
• Accessing materials from the field
• Finding subject-specific materials
• Checking out materials
• Requesting materials
• Using reference services
• Submitting NOAA publications to the library
• Learn more

Who We Serve

The NOAA Central Library serves all NOAA employees located in Silver Spring, and Suitland, Maryland, as well as those located in the Hoover Building in downtown Washington, DC. We also serve patrons who work in regional offices across the country that are not served by another NOAA library, including but not limited to these locations:

National Weather Service

• Staff located in Silver Spring, Suitland, Maryland, and the Hoover Building in downtown Washington, DC.
• Aviation Weather Center (Kansas City, MO)
• Spaceflight Meteorology Group (Houston, Texas)
• National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center (Chanhassen, MN)
• National Data Buoy Center (Stennis Space Center, MISS)
• NWS Training Center (Kansas City, MO)
• Central Region Headquarters (Kansas City, MO)
• Eastern Region Headquarters (Bohemia, NY)
• Southern Region Headquarters (Houston, TX)
• Forecast Offices and River Forecast Centers in these states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, ND, SD, Wisconsin, WY, MN, MD, MASS, NJ, NY, OH, PA, SC, Vermont, VA, West Va, AL, ARK, Georgia, LA, MISS, NM, Puerto Rico, AZ, MT, NV, UT, CO, TX

NOAA Fisheries (National Marine Fisheries Service)

• Staff located in Silver Spring, Suitland, Maryland, and the Hoover Building in downtown Washington, DC.
• Southeast Regional Office (St. Petersburg, FL)
• Southeast Fisheries Science Center Labs at Stennis, MS, Galveston, Texas, and Lafayette, Louisiana
• Northeast Regional Office (Gloucester, MA)

National Ocean Service

• Staff located in Silver Spring, Suitland, Maryland, and the Hoover Building in downtown Washington, DC.
• NOAA Chesapeake Bay Program Office
• Office of National Marine Sanctuaries: Thunder Bay, Stellwagen Bank, Monitor, Gray's Reef, Flower Garden

National Satellite and Information Service (NESDIS)

• Staff located in Silver Spring, Suitland, Maryland, and the Hoover Building in downtown Washington, DC.
• Wallops Command and Data Acquisition Station (Wallops, VA)
• National Coastal Data Development Center (Stennis, MS)

Office of General Counsel

• Staff located in Silver Spring, Suitland, Maryland, and the Hoover Building in downtown Washington, DC.
• The Office of the Southeast Regional Counsel (St. Petersburg, FL)
• The Office of the Northeast Regional Counsel (GCNE) (Gloucester, MASS)

Office of Marine & Aviation Operations

• Staff located in Silver Spring, Suitland, Maryland, and the Hoover Building in downtown Washington, DC.
• Aircraft Operations Center (AOC) (MacDill AFB, FL)

If your work location is not listed here, please visit our NOAA Libraries Network page to find the NOAA library closest to you. If you are unsure of which NOAA library serves you, please ask us and we will help connect you to the right library.

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Becoming a Library Patron

Anyone who has a noaa.gov email address may register as a library patron. You do not need to register to access the library’s electronic materials at your desktop or to use the library’s resources in person. It is only necessary to register if you wish to check out items, or to access certain online databases.

There are currently two different procedures for becoming a library patron, depending on your employment status.

Federal Employees: visit the library and register as a library patron at the reference desk. The library’s location and hours are listed on our Hours and Directions page.

Contractors, Sea Grant fellows, and other NOAA affiliates: please fill out the Contractor Use of NOAA Central Library form (.pdf), have your COTR or federal supervisor sign it, and then bring it to the library reference desk. If necessary, you can email the completed form to the reference desk or fax it to 301-713-4599.

If you are unsure if you have registered as a library patron, or if you have any other questions, please ask us.

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What We Have

The NOAA Central Library collects materials in a wide variety of formats on a large number of subjects related to NOAA research, including environmental science, ecology, fisheries, geosciences, marine and freshwater biology, meteorological and atmospheric sciences, oceanography and limnology, and more. Listed below are some of the types of materials available through the library.

Journals: We currently subscribe to over 1,000 peer-reviewed journals in both electronic and print formats. For a list of our electronic journals, please visit our E-Journals page. You can also find both print and electronic journals through the library catalog.

Electronic Databases: We provide access to a number of databases that index journals in a wide range of subject areas. To see which databases we have, and to access them directly from your desktop, you can either view our alphabetical list or view them sorted by subject.

NOAA Resources: The NOAA Central Library is the official repository of all NOAA publications and is the best place to find materials about NOAA history, videos documenting NOAA research expeditions, and more. All of these materials are findable through the library catalog. Please see the Submitting Your Publication to the Library section of this page for information on how to ensure your publications are included in our collection.

Books, Maps, Charts, etc: We have a wide variety of print materials, including historical maps of the ocean floor, modern and historical books on climate, and more. All of these materials are findable through the library catalog.

Images: We also maintain an online Photo Library of over 40,000 images taken by NOAA staff. The majority of these images are in the public domain, so feel free to use them in your publications, websites, or personal projects.

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Accessing Electronic Materials from Your NOAA Computer

We have five types of electronic materials available: databases, digital collections, electronic journals, ebooks, and .pdf files of NOAA publications. Because we provide access to most of our electronic materials through IP authentication, you do not need to become a library patron or use a password to use most of these resources from your NOAA computer. If you cannot connect to an e-journal or database from your NOAA computer, please send the computer’s IP address to Steve Quillen and we will add your computer to our list.

If you have any other questions about using any of these resources, please ask us.

Databases: All of the databases provided by the library are accessible from the Databases and Article Searching page. You can also see these databases arranged by subject. Click on any of the database titles in these lists to access them directly. Access to some of these databases may be restricted, so please see the individual database descriptions for availability. For remote access to these databases, see the Accessing Materials from the Field section of this page.

Digital Collections: The library is in the process of digitizing portions of its historical collections in order to make them more easily accessible to our patrons and to the general public. All of the materials that have been digitized and made available can be accessed through our Digital Documents and Maps Collections page. These materials are freely available to everyone.

Electronic Journals: The library provides a searchable list of all of the electronic journals accessible through the NOAA Central Library. To access the online content of a journal, find the journal in this list by either searching for the journal or by browsing the alphabetical list, click on the journal title, and then click on the link provided under the “access details” heading. If there is not a link on the journal record page, then either the journal does not provide electronic access, or the library currently does not subscribe to the online version of that particular journal. You can also search for the journal title in the library catalog and view the full text from the link in the “Details” page.

eBooks: All of the library’s eBooks are findable through the library catalog. To limit your catalog search to eBooks, select “Electronic book” from the drop-down menu entitled “type” on the advanced search page of the catalog. To view an ebook from the catalog, simply click on the link provided in the catalog record page. You can also search the library’s NetLibrary eBook collection.

NOAA Publications: All of the NOAA publications included in the library’s collection are findable through the library catalog. A link to view or download a publication (usually in .pdf format) is provided in the catalog record for that publication.

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Accessing Materials from the Field

Your ability to access the library’s electronic collections from a non-NOAA computer depends both on the type of resource needed and on the vendor that provides that resource.

NOAA Publications: The library’s electronic collections of NOAA publications and videos are freely accessible to anyone. You can access them from anywhere via the library catalog.

Databases: Field access to online databases depends on the database vendor.

• Databases that are available to anyone, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals and the National Academies press, can be accessed from anywhere.
• For databases such as Lexis-Nexis and FirstSearch that require a user ID and password to access, you may use your user ID and password to access the database from anywhere. Contact the reference desk to obtain a user ID and password to these databases.
• Other databases, such as Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts and Meteorological and Geophysical Abstracts, require IP authentication to access, so you cannot use them from the field. However, we can email articles to you from the reference desk, so if you need articles in the field, please ask us and we will email you the articles you need.

E-Journals and E-books: Because our current e-journal and e-book subscriptions require us to authenticate users by their IP addresses, we cannot offer access to them to you while you are away from your NOAA computer. However, we can email articles to you while you are in the field, so please ask us and we will email you the materials you need.

If you cannot access our electronic collections from your NOAA office computer, email the IP address of the computer to Steve Quillen and we will connect you.

If you have any other questions about accessing electronic collections from the field, please ask us.

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Finding Subject-Specific Materials

The NOAA Central Library staff has compiled a number of Subject Guides and Bibliographies to assist you in finding materials on particular subjects.

We also provide a list of databases sorted by subject to assist you in choosing the right database for your search.

For more information on library resources in your areas of interest, please ask us.

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Checking Out Materials

You may check out certain items from the library if you work in the Silver Spring, MD area and are a registered library patron. If you are not currently registered, you may register as a library patron at the same time that you check out an item. If you are not sure if you are a registered patron, please ask us. To check out an item, simply bring it to the reference desk and ask to check it out.

The standard borrowing period for items is one month. To request an extension to this period, or to renew an item, contact the reference desk.

Journals may be checked out for one day or overnight.

Rare books, reference materials, and other special items may not be checked out, but are available for use in the library.

For more information on becoming a library patron, see the Becoming a Library Patron section of this page. Please ask us if you have any other questions about checking out materials.

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Requesting Materials

If the library does not have the resource or publication you need, you can request that we get it for you. If you work in the Silver Spring, MD area, you have two options to get the materials you need.

Interlibrary Loan: If you only need a particular item for a certain amount of time, you can request that we borrow the item from another library. For more information about the interlibrary loan service at the NOAA Central Library and to place a request, please see our Interlibrary Loan page.

Purchase Request: If you would like the library to add an item or journal subscription to our permanent collection, you may email your request to Steve Quillen. In your email, please include as much information about the item as possible to assist us in locating and evaluating it for our collection.

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Using Reference Services

We at the library are here to provide you with information. We encourage you to ask us any questions you may have about the library, using library resources, literature searching, finding data sets, citation analysis, and more.

To ask us a question from your desktop, we encourage you to use our Ask-A-Librarian feature or email the reference desk directly. You may also fax your question to 301-713-4599. If you would rather talk to a librarian, we encourage you to visit the library during our Open Hours or call us during those hours at 301-713-2600 x124.

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Submitting NOAA Publications to the Library

By Administrative Order, the NOAA Central Library is the official repository for all NOAA publications. The library collects all of the technical reports, technical memos, promotional materials, videos, etc. that have been generated by NOAA staff and makes them available to all of NOAA and the general public through the library catalog.

To submit your publication to the library, please do one of the following depending on whether your publication is in electronic or print format.

Electronic: For publications in electronic formats (.pdf, .doc, etc), please email the URL of the publication to Steve Quillen. If the publication is not posted online, please email the file as an attachment to Steve Quillen.

Print: For publications that only exist in print, or if you have print copies of an electronic publication, please bring two copies of the publication to the library and give them to the librarian at the reference desk.

If you have any questions about submitting your publications, please ask us.

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Learn More

To learn more about using the library or the library’s resources, please visit our Library Instruction page. There you will find information about upcoming library training opportunities as well as links to view online tutorials covering a number of the resources provided by the library.

If you have any other questions or comments, you may contact Mary Lou Cumberpatch or Chris Belter.

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