Keeping a Reading Room of Their Own

"Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times."

This was Machiavelli's view, and it's one held by professional researchers, librarians and U.S. government reading-room regulars. They have been lobbying to preserve access to historical documents at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Alarm bells went off last year when they learned that the agency might archive, discard or otherwise send off-site a trove of materials in preparation for a move to a new building with less space.

The agency, which is part of the Transportation Department and is charged with regulating vehicle safety, has maintained a public document room since it opened in 1970. Like many other federal agencies, it allowed the public to request materials, read and copy them.

Visitors to the reading room have had access to some 20 million pages of research reports, investigative files, recall campaigns, consumer complaint letters, service bulletins that date to 1968 and a docket of agency rulemakings and comments.

Even though some of the agency's more recent filings, dating to the late 1980s and 1990s, are available online, the prospect of losing easy access to the entire collection set off a campaign to save them.

Those who have used the documents for years argue that the materials are key to building a legal case, updating an old rule or crafting an accurate comment on a regulatory proposal.

"It would be catastrophic to have it taken away for manufacturers, defendants in lawsuits, everyone," said Susan Longacre, president of Longacre & Associates, a technical safety research service in Annapolis.

Toyota Motor and other automakers said they are occasional users, and the Alliance of Auto Manufacturers, a group of major automakers, said most of the documents it needs already have been retrieved and copied.

Erika Jones, a partner with the law firm Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, which represents the auto industry, said the room is richer in resources and better at retrieval than those at other agencies.

Federal agencies are required to make certain documents available to the public for inspection and copying, and documents from after 1996 have to be stored electronically, as well.

The prospect of the reading room becoming a casualty of the move was real. In 2006, nary a square foot was allotted for a NHTSA reference room in the building that will house most of the Transportation Department.