NASA administrator questioned Goddard library review, emails show

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman privately asked senior aides on December 31 whether the agency was “confident in our process that nothing of technical or historical significance will be lost” as it closed the research library at the Goddard Space Flight Center, internal emails show.

A senior communications official wrote that he responded the team was conducting “a full inventory.” Two weeks earlier, a Goddard official told colleagues that the General Services Administration did not need a manifest for the books NASA was giving up, so crews could “box everything else up with no need to manifest.”

The emails are part of a final release of records NASA produced September 22 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request Urgent Matter filed in January. The release covers the email accounts of three officials involved with the closure: Marlo Maddox and Patrick Lynch at Goddard and Gary Willis, the headquarters program manager who oversaw the assessment of the collection.

NASA released 197 pages in full and 273 in part, withholding material under exemptions for internal deliberations, personal privacy and two law-enforcement provisions.

Paid subscribers can read the full documents.

FOIA Documents: NASA Goddard library closure emails

The final FOIA release from NASA, comprising emails of three officials involved in the Goddard library closure.

Urgent MatterAdam Schrader

Isaacman’s question went to a group including Will Boyington, the agency’s associate administrator for communications, in response to a New York Times story published that day. Boyington forwarded it to Wes Brown, the communications office’s deputy associate administrator for management.

“I let them know the team was conducting a full inventory and that any unique items would be transferred to Glenn,” Brown wrote to Willis, referring to NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio. “Wasn’t aware the story was coming out.”

On January 2, Isaacman posted on X that NASA was not “‘tossing out’ important scientific or historical materials.” Lynch told Goddard leaders the post was “being worked directly by his senior adviser, John Kraus.” NASA withheld the draft in full.

Acting Center Director Cynthia Simmons wrote on January 5 that “the written response given to Jared I. was very well written.” The release does not include that response.

“It is a great privilege and honor to be supported by colleagues such as you who I can fully
rely on especially during ‘interesting’ times such as these…!” Simmons added.

The manifest email came from Nick Nemecek, associate director of Goddard’s Management Operations Directorate, on December 17, less than two weeks into the 60-day review NASA said would decide which materials to keep.

“A manifest is not needed, which should lighten the effort as far as process goes,” Nemecek wrote to Maddox and Willis after a colleague checked with the GSA facility in Springfield. “For example, as the assessment identifies books to keep, if those are manifested and packed for a new home a follow-up crew could come and box everything else up with no need to manifest.”

The plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit over the closure asked the court to order NASA to produce an inventory of the materials slated for removal. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper denied their request for a preliminary injunction on April 29.

Cooper ruled that the plaintiffs had not shown Isaacman or the Archivist of the United States knew the agency was violating federal records law in how it sorted the collection, citing Isaacman's X post. The opinion also notes that NASA indicated at a February court conference that some “publicly available” books and journals would be shipped to the GSA for “destruction.”

Willis told the court in a sworn declaration that “no corners [were] cut” during the review. NASA said it was prepared to send about 2,520 boxes to Glenn and about 3,396 boxes to the GSA.

NASA's inspector general reported in June that the agency had waived its requirement for a full physical inventory of all supplies, materials and controlled equipment in fiscal 2026 and that Goddard had received a January exception to NASA policy letting the GSA control disposition of certain excess property.

On December 17, the same day as Nemecek’s email, a Goddard business manager relayed a question from the center’s logistics team about who would fund the “requirements to excess books and other materials from the GSFC Library.” Willis replied that Goddard was paying, based on his understanding from a visit.

“For clarity, we have no funding for this action as it was not planned nor initiated by OCOMM,” Willis wrote, referring to NASA’s Office of Communications, which runs the agency’s libraries. “Is GSFC paying for disposal & shipping costs?”

Philisha Stephens, another communications office staffer, wrote that it was her understanding Goddard would cover “the cost of the closure as it is driven by the Center.” Nemecek replied that Goddard would “take care of it as part of our consolidation effort.”

On January 2, Jacob Richmond, acting deputy director of Goddard’s communications office, asked the Times to correct its story. He wrote that the closure was part of “a centerwide consolidation/transformation plan and also an agencywide library modernization/reorganization effort.” He also objected to the paper’s paraphrase of him.

“I never said materials would be stored in a warehouse or tossed away,” Richmond wrote.

The Times declined. “We discussed the holdings and that some would be kept and others disposed of,” reporter Eric Niiler replied.

Urgent Matter previously reported that NASA’s own records show 12 pallets from the headquarters library and 66 from the Marshall Space Flight Center were sent to a warehouse in Laurel, Maryland.

The emails also show how the review began. On December 4, Willis told Lynch and Maddox that “to properly do an assessment in the 60 days, we need to stop all in-person library services and collection access immediately.”

A day later, Willis wrote that the staff could not keep the library open during the review. “Simply put, we are not staffed to do stay open and complete the assessment,” he wrote. “We honestly don’t have staff for the normal desired daily services.”

Maddox wrote that Goddard had discussed closing the library on December 8 but chose to “synchronize the GSFC Library closure with some of the other closures/notifications here in Greenbelt,” which he said “helps us with messaging on our end.” He wrote that the “new/official closure date” was January 2.

Willis then told the group that in-person services had stopped at 4 p.m. on Friday, December 5. NASA’s statement to the Times, approved by Goddard and headquarters officials, said services were paused on December 9, 2025.

The December 9 announcement told employees the review “will determine which materials to retain.” Lynch had circulated a draft of the library message a day earlier under the file name “library_closing_draft.docx.” NASA withheld its text.

Willis had been told where the library sat in Goddard’s plans months before the review. On July 2, 2025, Goddard chief librarian Robin Dixon sent him notes saying a plan to consolidate buildings and labs west of Goddard Road was due in August.

“The GSFC Library is housed in building 21 – one of the planned consolidated spaces,” Dixon wrote.

Urgent Matter previously reported that NASA slides placed Building 21 on a divestment schedule in September 2025. It also reported that a November deck recommended sending more than 95% of the book stacks to the GSA before the review began.

Employees raised the same concern in December. On December 5, the Goddard Ad Hoc Library Advisory Committee, chaired by Barbara Thompson of the Heliophysics Science Division, circulated a draft letter addressed to center leaders. The letter said NASA's response to a congressional inquiry "dated November 21, 2025 indicated only that the library is 'under evaluation.'"

“This characterization appears incomplete, as multiple actions already underway suggest that permanent closure has been planned,” the committee wrote. It said library staff had been asked “to select only 10–14% of the holdings for preservation.”

Lynch wrote to Brown two days later that he had notified NASA’s legislative affairs office “given the letter writer’s stated intent to push to media, NASAwatch, Congress, etc.”

On January 14, two weeks before the review ended, Robert Petre, director of Goddard’s Astrophysics Science Division, learned who was running it. A staffer had asked at a facilities meeting about Isaacman’s interviews describing scientists and engineers reviewing the collection.

“Why haven’t we been told this?” Petre wrote. “People have been told nothing and thus have drawn the conclusion that the library holdings will be jettisoned.”

A draft of NASA’s statement to the Times said Goddard employees “will continue to have access to books.” Raymond Rubilotta, Goddard’s associate center director, questioned that line before it went out on December 23.

“Is this true? We are not allowing access now,” Rubilotta wrote. The statement was revised to promise access “via the federal interlibrary loan process.”

As the review ran, institutions offered to take the books. The release includes offers or inquiries from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s library, Capitol Technology University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the Southwest Research Institute, the Institute for Defense Analyses, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s archives and the American Philosophical Society.

Jeffrey Volosin, a retired NASA employee who directs Capitol Tech’s astronautical engineering program, offered on January 4 to “pick-up, archive, store in our library, and make accessible to researchers, any/all material from the GSFC library.” Maddox told him anything not kept would go through the GSA’s excess property process.

NPR reported this month that NASA later donated hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of radio equipment to Capitol Tech without the knowledge of the scientists who used it.

JPL’s library, which wrote that it “would like to acquire a portion of your print holdings,” asked for “the approved evaluation and disposition process.” When Lynch asked about it, Willis replied, “There is some additional background on this one that requires discussion.”

The librarian at the Institute for Defense Analyses wrote that staff “would be elated to know we’ve had a hand in keeping this precious resource from destruction.” Willis replied, “Thank you for reaching out. We will contact you if we need any assistance.”

Embry-Riddle’s library told NASA that two agency inboxes it tried, including library@hq.nasa.gov, “appear to no longer be in service.” Lynch wrote on January 7 that he had received an inquiry “directly from the President of the University of Maryland.” By January 22 he described “dozens of external inquiries.”

The release does not show whether any of those institutions received materials.

On January 6, NASA’s agency records officer, Peggy Jenkins, contacted the library’s contractors about “the status/logistics of any records the library may hold,” with two National Archives staffers copied. “NARA has reached out to me as well,” Jenkins wrote.

On January 29, the day before the assessment concluded, Lynch told headquarters that “a significant volume of books will start moving out of Goddard mid- to late next week.” A week earlier, Nemecek had logged an action to pull library consolidation “back to 3/4/26 completion.”

NASA withheld passages about where the books would go as deliberative. “Regardless of the (b) (5) decision where are the Goddard books going,” Jennifer Dooren, a headquarters deputy news chief, wrote on January 29, before another redaction.

NASA also cited a law-enforcement exemption, which it said covered information technology infrastructure and security personnel details. Among the material withheld under that exemption is an item on a January calendar for Maddox's directorate.

NASA said in July that it searched Goddard's Facilities Management Division and its Logistics Management Division, but listed only the Management Operations Directorate, the chief archivist and the Office of Communications as yielding responsive records. The request described the Logistics Management Division as responsible for property disposition and sought disposition logs, inventories and property disposition forms.

None of the three releases, totaling more than 1,100 pages, contains records assessing NASA’s obligations under a 2012 settlement with the Goddard union that required the agency to maintain the library, which the request also sought. Urgent Matter has until December 21 to appeal.

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