The NOAA Central Library is located at the NOAA Silver Spring Metro Center campus in Silver Spring, MD. We are open to NOAA employees, contractors, and affiliates, Monday thru Friday, from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM (Federal holidays excluded). Visiting scholars, researchers, and members of the general public may also schedule an appointment by contacting our library reference staff.
Please see our Visiting the Library section for more information about arranging a visit.
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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.
Information on how NOAA employees, contractors, and affiliates can register as library patrons is available in our Visiting the Library section. Whenever possible, we try to provide access to our collection to scholars and researchers who are not officially affiliated with NOAA. If you are not a NOAA employee or contractor, and would like to visit us, please contact the reference/information desk via e-mail (library.reference@noaa.gov) or phone (301) 713-2600 ext. 157) to arrange a visit.
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:
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 sure if you are a registered patron, please contact 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.
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 are a NOAA employee, contractor, or affiliate, and cannot connect to an e-journal or database from your NOAA computer, please fill out the library's Report an Access Issue Google Form and we will respond to you as soon as possible.
If you have any other questions about using any of these resources, please contact us.
If the library does not have the resource or publication you need, you can request that we get it for you.
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 (ILL) service at the NOAA Central Library and to place a request, please see our Interlibrary Loan section.
If we are not able to locate an item through ILL, or you would like the library to consider adding an item or journal subscription to our permanent collection, you may email your request to interlibrary.loan@noaa.gov. In your email, please include as much information about the item as possible to assist us in locating and evaluating it for our collection.
Under NOAA Administrative Order NAO 205-17A: Information Access & Dissemination, 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, and other documents that have been generated by NOAA staff and makes them available to all of NOAA and the general public through the 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:
If you have any questions about submitting your publications, please contact us.
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.
If you cannot access our electronic collections from your NOAA office computer, please fill out the library's Report an Access Issue Google Form and we will respond to you as soon as possible.
If you have any other questions about accessing electronic collections from the field, please contact us.
We at the library are here to provide you research services. 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.
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 ext. 157.