Joe Mocnik, dean of libraries at North Dakota State University in Fargo (NDSU), was talking about his school’s relationship to renewable energy on a campus mainly heated by coal power—in a state about 75% reliant on coal—but the challenges and opportunities he described sounded familiar to librarians looking to make sustainable development ingresses at their … Continue reading Stories of Sustainability
“When you start talking about compost and food waste, people immediately think of fruit flies and mice and stinky garbage,” Tans says. As the school’s environmental sciences librarian, Tans participates in MSU Libraries’ robust programming around recycling, composting, and deaccessioning books. Founded in 1855, MSU is a historically agricultural school. The institution’s long tradition of … Continue reading Leading the Green Revolution
“It is time for you, at this conference, to engage and explore,” said Donna Scheeder, president of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), to the crowd gathered for the Opening Session of the 2017 World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) on August 20. “I’m sure among this group is a future IFLA president somewhere.” Speakers seemed … Continue reading Welcome to Wrocław
This column is one in a multipart American Libraries series that explores the library profession’s relationship to sustainability. When I first started working at Fresno State as the first-year student success librarian in 2015, a colleague referred my name to a team of science professors in this program. From there, I began attending weekly meetings and contributing … Continue reading Campus Sustainability through Information Literacy
In her session “A Few Things Libraries Can Do About Climate Change,” Veerle Minner Van Neygen, a Madrid, Spain–based district manager for the Climate Reality Project, warned of the environmental impacts of a warming Earth and highlighted a handful of mitigation efforts that libraries should pursue: reducing the library’s carbon footprint, building green collections, conserving … Continue reading Intersection of Libraries and Science: Day Four of IFLA WLIC
Generally speaking, human beings have been aware of these boundaries throughout history, if only to protect existing resources. Our lives depended on it—and still do. But societies have come to view themselves as independent of that abstract entity known as “nature” and believe that human beings can handle their environment at their convenience, using and … Continue reading Degrowth Is Coming
In addition to the many remarkable speakers and presentations that made the conference a rich educational experience, the work of the Association is also noteworthy: The Conference Accessibility Task Force issued recommendations for accessibility improvements at upcoming conferences. The Chapter Relations Communications Task Force issued a report to help improve chapter engagement with ALA. A … Continue reading Leaders in the Library
McKibben minced no words. “We are currently losing the battle for a livable planet,” he said. “We need to use every model we can think of to get back in this fight. We need to understand the vast scale and pace of the problem of climate change in order to get the right scale and … Continue reading Fighting the Battle for a Livable Planet
This column is one in a multipart American Libraries series that explores the library profession’s relationship to sustainability. Sustainability does not mean continuing the public library, its facilities, and its roles as they are now. It may mean retaining key elements of the library while changing many others. Or it may mean retaining the core values … Continue reading Sustainability in Public Libraries
This column is one in a multipart American Libraries series that explores the library profession’s relationship to sustainability. Author and entrepreneur John Elkington, often credited for introducing the concept of TBL, wrote in Cannibals with Forks: Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business (1999) that organizations must be economically prosperous, promote environmental quality, and be champions of … Continue reading Triple Bottom Line Sustainability
This column is one in a multipart American Libraries series that explores the library profession’s relationship to sustainability. Libraries can move toward providing a fact-based voice in fighting climate change in their communities. One way to do this is by more proactively collecting and disseminating information to stakeholders involved in local sustainability efforts. A recent study … Continue reading Strengthening the Voice for Sustainability
This column is one in a multipart American Libraries series that explores the library profession’s relationship to sustainability. Why not? I hadn’t previously thought of embedding myself in the Sustainability Office, but the idea seemed brilliant. Typically, academic libraries mirror the subject-based structure of academic departments; but one of the unique aspects of campus sustainability is … Continue reading Sustainability on the Other Side of the Stacks
