|
The
State Library’s California Research Bureau (CRB)
offers specialized library services to unique
users. Working for lawmakers and other elected
officials, CRB researchers gather and analyze
data from disparate sources and then consolidate
it in annotated reports for those California
policymakers.
One of the
most recent CRB reports,
Timeline of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge
Seismic Retrofit: Milestones in Decision-Making,
Financing, and Construction, chronicles the
delays and funding battles of retrofitting and
ultimately rebuilding the San Francisco-Oakland
Bay Bridge. The Timeline culls crucial events
from the mountains of reports and analyses
connected to the Bay Bridge project and lays out
the events briefly and chronologically to assist decision-makers in moving forward with this important project.
Assemblywoman
Wilma Chan requested the report from the CRB in
an effort to provide a clearer understanding of
the Bay Bridge retrofit history, including the
fact that the bridge’s cost has risen from
$2.6 billion in 2001 to $5.1 billion today. Chan
says, “Anyone who wants a straightforward
account of the history of the Bay Bridge
retrofit saga will find this report invaluable.”
Chan,
chair of Joint Legislative Audits Committee at
the time of the Bay Bridge request, represents
the 16th Assembly District in Alameda County,
which includes the cities of Oakland, Piedmont,
and Alameda. She had previously used the CRB to
create visual displays showing traffic
congestion and highway projects in Alameda and
Contra Costa counties
The
CRB’s research requests, like Chan’s for the
Bay Bridge retrofit, can turn into front
page headlines, so the CRB combines the
expertise of librarians and researchers to
ensure a meticulous product.
For
the Timeline, CRB researcher Daniel Pollak, a
M.S. in environmental policy and a former
research assistant at Stanford University's
Center for International Security and Arms
Control, teamed with CRB information services
staff members Dan Mitchel and Carolyn Zeitler,
to locate and analyze 124 online, State Library
and Caltrans library sources related to the Bay
Bridge and to sift through Oakland’s
Metropolitan Transportation Commission hard copy
file documents.
The
resulting annotated chronology’s purpose was
not to tell the reader what to think about the
Bay Bridge controversy, but to put in sequence
the often confusing and tangled events that led
to the current predicament.
|
