Researchers dismayed as NASA's largest research library closes in Maryland; NBCWashington, January 2, 2026

Dominique Moody, NBCWashington ; Researchers dismayed as NASA's largest research library closes in Maryland

[Kip Currier: The Trump 2.0 closure of NASA's research library at at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland represents multiple policy failures:

The library's shuttering demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of the strategic access to information and data, archival preservation, and competitive intelligence capabilities that libraries and their staffs provide to researchers and scientists.

The closure also is an affront to the bedrock principle that cultural heritage institutions like libraries, archives, and museums offer historical continuity to societies by curating and stewarding information and memory over the course of centuries. Discarding accumulated knowledge like NASA's for short-term reasons squanders the collective heritage and treasure of this nation.]

[Excerpt]

"For the past 32 years, David Williams has curated former space mission data and spaceflight journals for NASA's Space Science Data Archive.

The large research library NASA has at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, was an incredibly important resource in that work. The library is a hub for thousands of books and scientific journals, many of them containing information that can't be found anywhere else.

"I was there all the time," Williams said. "It was just one of the main sources of information for me in order to make this database complete and to make this data useful for researchers."

That source is no longer available.

According to the Goddard Engineers, Scientists and Technicians' Association (GESTA)— a union representing hundreds of NASA employees — all in-person library services at the Goddard Space Flight Center were paused on Dec. 9 while staff completed a 60-day review of the collection.

The in-person services paused included checking out books from the library.

Around that same time, NASA management told GESTA that the library was set to close Friday, Jan. 2.

"I have a hard time imagining a research center of the high quality that Goddard is, or any center at NASA, how they will operate without a library, without a central collection," Williams said."

NASA’s Largest Library Is Closing Amid Staff and Lab Cuts; The New York Times, December 31, 2025

 Eric Niiler, The New York Times; NASA’s Largest Library Is Closing Amid Staff and Lab Cuts

[Kip Currier: As a life-long space aficionado (as just one example, I fondly recall as a boy my Dad waking me up so I could watch the 1972 Apollo 17 launch that occurred at 12:33 AM) and long-time proponent of libraries, archives, and museums as essential societal institutions and trusted keepers of our history and cultures, seeing this story today was truly stomach-turning.

How shameful and short-sighted for the Trump administration to unilaterally decide to close NASA's largest library. The items within that library's singular collections represent the collective space-faring history and legacy of every person, not just one transitory administration.]

[Excerpt]

"The Trump administration is closing NASA’s largest research library on Friday, a facility that houses tens of thousands of books, documents and journals — many of them not digitized or available anywhere else.

Jacob Richmond, a NASA spokesman, said the agency would review the library holdings over the next 60 days and some material would be stored in a government warehouse while the rest would be tossed away."