sustainable

February 10, 2012

Libraries for Sustainability Webinar Series 2012 – kickoff 2/28/12

Please join us for the kick-off webinar of the Libraries for Sustainability Webinar Series 2012 :
Feb 28, 2012 – 2:00-3:00 (EST)  – Call to Action and Collaboration – Sign up now!

ALA’s Task Force On the Environment (TFOE) has been engaged in environmental issues for over 20 years and done some tremendous work but has suffered from a lack of participation and lost momentum in recent years.

Join us, and Maria A. Jankowska (UCLA Research Librarian and Editor of Electronic Green Journal), most recent TFOE chair, to understand what TFOE has accomplished, including pitfalls and successes – plus recommendations for next steps. Should this group be revitalized and/or is a change in direction indicated? What are some options for remaining engaged at the local and national levels? Where are opportunities for collaboration and action around broader sustainability issues?

Hopeful outcomes:  Informal meeting at ALA 2012 in June to work on forming a new group; planning for sustainability-related presentations at ALA 2013! – Sign up now!

Time permitting, please review Maria’s recent article, Going beyond Environmental Programs and Green Practices at the American Library Association, which provides a helpful timeline of TFOE’s history and associated activities.

Webinar series facilitators: Madeleine Charney (UMass Amherst Libraries), Beth Filar Williams (UNC Greenboro), and Bonnie Smith (University of Florida Libraries).

Stay tuned for more webinars:
April 24, 2012, 2:00-3:00 (EST) – Exploring Sustainability Practices in Libraries
June 12, 2012, 2:00-3:00 (EST)  – Preparing for ALA Annual Informal Meeting
August 28, 2012 2:00-3:00 (EST) – Action Plan Follow Up & Discussion

Questions? Contact Madeleine Charney at mcharney@library.umass.edu or Beth FilarWilliams at greeningyourlibrary@gmail.com

January 12, 2012

NBII website to be taken offline!

Not such good news,  but important to let you know so you can preserve some of the links:  

Due to federal budget cuts,  the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) website at http://www.nbii.gov/portal/server.pt/community/nbii_home/236 will be removed from the Web on January 15, 2012 .  Library of Congress/Web Archiving Team  says that as part of a collaborative web archive project to archive U.S. Federal Government Websites, this site has been crawled by the Internet Archive as a part of that project (though not publicly accessible yet but hopefully it has been preserved.) 

Thanks Maria Anna Jankowska for bringing this to my attention!

October 19, 2011

Article Alert – A Whole Systems Approach: Integrated Building Design

Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, a 2010 LJ Mover & Shaker, is Coordinator for Library Growth & Sustainability at the Mid-Hudson Library System, Poughkeepsie, NY  wrote  this wonderful article in Library Journal  A Whole Systems Approach: Integrated Building Design.  She tackles the concept of IBD is “a collaborative process, resulting in optimized solutions from an engaged team that is committed to the process from start to finish”  in a way most every librarian can understand.   Want to know more about this IBD concept and how it really work well buy-in and support by all when building greener sustainable libraries – well you have to read the article and follow Rebekkah on  Facebook.com/SustainableLibraries!

September 26, 2011

Green Book Festival 2012: call for entries

Call for entries!  This annual competition –2012 Green Book Festival –  honors books that contribute to greater understanding, respect and positive action on the changing worldwide environment. Considerations to published, self-published and independent publisher works in the following categories: non-fiction, fiction, children’s books, teenage, how-to, audio/spoken word, comics/graphic novels, poetry, science fiction/horror, biography/autobiography, gardening, cookbooks,animals, photography/art, e-books, wild card (anything goes!), scientific, white
paper, legal, business, mystery and spiritual. Entries can be in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese or Italian.

Grand prize  – $1500 and transportation to our May awards in San Francisco OR an equivalent amount donated in your name to the environmental charity of your choice.

A panel of judges will determine the winners based on the following criteria:

1) The overall writing style and presentation of the work;
2) The potential of the work to enhance understanding of the environment and its
issues;

TO ENTER: Entry forms are available online at http://www.greenbookfestival.com or may be sent to you by emailing GreenBookFestival@sbcglobal.net.

The Green Book Festival is produced by JM Northern Media LLC, producers of the
Hollywood Book Festival, New York Book Festival and DIY Convention: Do It
Yourself in Film, Music & Books.

September 22, 2011

Resource Guide for Green Librarians!

Check out this great resource guide  by Laura Barnes  of Prairie Research Institute, Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (University of Illinois Library)

I love the guide’s opening Introduction box that contains handouts from green library workshops with slides and resources.  It  includes RSS feeds from the Environmental News Bits Libraries category and  a list of new green library resources (from her “delicious” bookmarks tagged for green libraries) which you can subscribe to the RSS feed.

Other tabs include a Sustainability Overview, with book and website recommendations in general and for sustainable libraries; a Green Building/facility tab with sections on energy, green cleaning and water efficiency; a Purchasing tab, with info on greenwashing, product guides, electronic disposal, and paper use/recycling; a collection development tab on green weeding information and collection development collection resource links; and lastly a Programming tab with book lists, curriculum resources, and art/craft projects.

Thanks Laura, a great resource so many libraries can now use!

August 18, 2011

AASHE Conference 2011 – registration now open!

Registration is currently open for “AASHE 2011: Creating Sustainable Campuses and Communities,”  October 9-12, 2011; Pittsburgh, PA.  Dr. Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Laureate, will be the conference’s opening keynote speaker and Bill McKibben, author and founder of 350.org, will be the AASHE Student Summit keynote speaker. See other additions in the conference program overview. I attended last year and it rocked! I hope some of you green librarians get a chance to attend too!

April 6, 2011

UNEP Research Reports

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has published some freely available research reports worth adding to your collections. UNEP works collaboratively to promote the wise use and sustainable development of the global environment. This recent report is called Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Developmentand Poverty Eradication – A Synthesis for Policy Makers, which can be viewed online, searched, downloaded, viewed on a mobile device and shared.   There are numerous others available here. There are numerous other reports available here.

April 4, 2011

Raj Patel @ ACRL

It was refreshing to hear a sustainability activist academic Raj Patel speak at the national Association College and Research Libraries biannual conference.  Raj Patel is UC Berkeley’s Center for African Studies, an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and a fellow at The Institute for Food and Development Policy, and spoke of global economic systems of interdependence and the international food crisis.  He has written over 5 books including the one he promoted at this talk The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy. Check out the video and a good purchase for your library perhaps.

March 11, 2011

Environmental Information Sources: Websites and Books

Great column in the recent Electronic Green Journal annotating environmental information web sites with a nice bibliography of books.  Categories include: Commercial Entities, Educational Institutions, International, Nonprofit & Research Organizations, U.S. Federal and State, Government Agencies, Books.

Citation:
Shrode, Flora. (2010). Environmental Information Sources: Websites and Books. Electronic Green Journal, 1(30). Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/8wk1t0rr

 

 

 

March 9, 2011

Call for examples of sustainable development & libraries

forwarding message from my global librarianship blogger friend @globallib

“A French colleague working in the Bibliothèque National de France (BnF, Paris) is seeking information for the internal journal of the Library on actions and projects linking sustainable development and libraries in the world. If you have examples, photos, any kind of documents or if yourself you are currently monitoring on this issue, please share with her all informations you can provide by contacting her IMMEDIATELY at: laura.houeix@bnf.fr

The deadline for the publication of the article is March 14th.

With warmest regards,
Vincent Bonnet
Co-Convenor of Environmental Sustainability and Libraries SIG“