Is there a central library within the ATF, available to individual ATF Agents and CFIs?

I recently received the following email from ATF Agent and NFPA 921 commitee member John Comery:

“Pat,
Hope the new year is treating you well.

I had expected to see you at Fire & Materials but our agency is out of funds so I will miss it.

In your reply to Steve Carmen you mentioned all the papers from the AFPRP. I have a copy of your ISFI 2004 paper but not the others you mentioned; ISFI 2006, Interflam 2004, NFPA 2004, NFPA 2005, NFPA 2006 and NFPA 2007. Any possibility I could get copies of those from you?”

I sent him this reply:

“Hi John,

I can send you copies of those papers of which I was one of the authors and will be happy to do so as soon as we return from Fire and Materials in California.

As for the other papers I will see what I can do. One of the primary purposes of the AFPRP is to publish out in the fire investigation science community. These papers should all be in some AFT library somewhere. Does ATF keep a central repository of the various Proceedings (Interflam, ISFI, NFPA, etc.) available to individual ATF CFI agents? If not, they certainly should. I would be happy to personally undertake the expense to donate copies of these important books to such an ATF repository if your agency would care to start one.

Herein lies one of the central problems of modern fire investigation science - we must get these research results out into the hands of the investigators who need them.

Pat”

Pat Kennedy, CFEI, CFPS, MIFireE
Fire and Explosion Analyst
Sarasota, Florida
[www.kennedy-fire.com]