Category: Candidate Statements

Greetings! My name is Debby Emerson and I am a candidate for a two-year term as Member-at-Large for SustainRT.

I was inspired to pursue this because of my involvement with the New York Library Association (NYLA) and its Sustainability Initiative. I’ve been an ALA member for many years, but other than attending annual conferences, I haven’t really been very engaged. I look at this as an opportunity to get involved, share information, and learn from other members of SustainRT.

In 2014, NYLA Council passed a Resolution on the Importance of Sustainable Libraries, recognizing the need to promote the role libraries can play in larger community conversations about resiliency, climate change and a sustainable future for the communities we serve. In the Fall of 2015, a select group of New York’s library leaders came together as Co-Creators to shape strategies to ensure our libraries remain vital, are able to rebound from disruption, and provide on-going value to the communities they serve. The Sustainability Initiative’s purpose statement is:

To create leadership and provide tools to mobilize libraries to think and act sustainably,

In a way that builds awareness and consensus while inspiring action by members of the library community to won their role as sustainability leaders in their communities,

So that communities thrive, bounce back from disruption and are infused with new and better life for everyone.

The group has divided into several working teams: Agents of Change, Benchmarking, Environmental Scan, Making the Case, and Roadmaps. I am part of the Benchmarking team and one of our tasks has been to come up with a list of existing benchmarks by which libraries can assess their sustainability. We specifically looked for existing standards rather than trying to “re-invent the wheel”. The teams have bi-monthly conference calls that keep all the Co-Creators informed about each other’s activities and progress on the initiative as a whole.

The NYLA Sustainability initiative has approached sustainability from the perspective of the Triple Bottom Line: In order for something (a product, policy, institution or community) to be truly sustainable it must meet three criteria: It must be socially equitable, economically feasible, and environmentally sound.

I am the current president of NYLA and I’m very excited to watch the Sustainability Initiative take shape. Each year the president picks a theme for the year and the annual NYLA Conference typically revolves around that theme.  I have selected “Strong. Strategic. Sustainable.” as my theme, with the idea that libraries are strong, strategic and sustainable, and we should also see our state professional association as strong, strategic and sustainable.

If elected, I look forward to this opportunity to serve ALA and to learn more about sustainability initiatives from a broader perspective. I will be happy to share information about our efforts in New York State, and grateful to learn from my colleagues in other parts of the country. I can assure you that I will be a contributing member of the group and will enthusiastically tackle whatever comes my way. I’m  happy to answer questions about the NYLA Sustainability Initiative and I invite people to contact me at demerson@clrc.org.

Greetings SustainRT members!

My name is Naomi Clewett and I am a candidate for SustainRT Treasurer. Over the past few years I have enjoyed participating in the SustainRT community virtually through the listserv. I’ve appreciated the great resources that have been shared, and have benefited from members’ helpful responses to my queries about establishing a monarch waystation at my library and seeking a healthier receipt paper option. (On that note, Appvion has product called “Alpha Free” that uses Vitamin C instead of BPA or BPS. The print is lighter than conventional thermal receipt paper, but if your community will tolerate that you might want to check it out.)

As a member of the nominating committee for this election cycle I was aware that no one had sought the role of Treasurer close to the deadline, so I put myself forward. I was pleased to discover that we have a great candidate in Lindsay Marlow.  I will be voting for Lindsay and urge you to as well!

The amplification of our lives by technology grants us a power over the natural world which we can no longer afford to use.  In everything we do we must be mindful of the lives of others, cautions, constrained, meticulous. We may no longer live as if there were no tomorrow.   –George Monbiot

Hi, my name is Amy Brunvand and I’m running for Coordinator Elect of SustainRT.

I’m an academic librarian at the University of Utah where I’m a government information specialist and the librarian liaison for programs in Environmental & Sustainability Studies and Environmental Humanities.  Like Art Dog, I lead a secret double life — Librarian by day, writer (and sometimes tango dancer) by night.

How did you become interested in libraries and sustainability?

Back in 1992 I read Bill McKibben’s The Age of Missing Information and wrote a largely un-read op-ed for Colorado Libraries magazine about preserving hyper-local information in the interest of what, at the time, was not yet called sustainability. I was also inspired by Wendell Berry’s ideas about the importance of place and the do-it-yourself ethos of “Whole Earth Review” (before it became obsessed with computer technology). To me, the essential link between libraries and sustainability is community engagement, and I recently co-authored an article about using government information to inform sustainability. Since 2001 I have written a monthly environmental news column for Catalyst magazine. My goal is to connect the dots between local issues, public policy and citizen groups. Through this writing I realized that the library is an ideal place to nurture ecologically literate, engaged citizenship, so a few years ago I jumped at an opportunity to change my liaison work from math/computer science to environment/sustainability studies.

What motivated you to run for Coordinator Elect of SustainRT?

Frankly, alternatives to sustainability are pretty scary. I feel a sense of urgency about the state of the world and I’d like an excuse to spend more time working on sustainability issues. There is a lot of synergy between the Big Ideas of Sustainability and the Core Values of Librarianship, and we librarians are in a great position to facilitate the transition to more sustainable and resilient future. Opportunities to promote sustainability exist in all areas of librarianship, not just green buildings. For instance, I’ve noticed that articles about whether eBooks or print books are more sustainable nearly always point out that borrowing library books is the most sustainable choice. Richard Louv suggests that libraries could be “naturebraries” that serve as hubs of bioregional knowledge. Another crucial role for libraries is enabling patrons to make a difference since change usually comes from the grassroots up; as Wendell Berry says, “The “leaders” will have to be led.”

How do you see the role of SustainRT?

SustainRT is the Jiminy Cricket of ALA, a little voice that keeps insisting sustainability is important. We are off to a great start and I’d like to keep the energy high. I hope we will develop our sense of community, maybe working with the Outreach Chair to host an online reading group, or a question-of-the-month discussion. Besides webinars and conference programs, SustainRT should be an incubator for practical ideas.

Anything else you’d like to say?

Sustainability can be fun!  Here’s an example of a student project I love: MovingU aims to reduce air pollution by encouraging alternative transportation choices.  As part of the project students gathered personal stories about air quality (I’m flattered that they picked a story I wrote). The library helped with information, tech support, promotion and archiving but students are the ones driving this project.

REFERENCES

Amy Brunvand (1992) “Resource Sharing and the Importance of Place.” Colorado Libraries, 18 (2), pp. 22-24.

Amy Brunvand & Ambra Gagliardi(2015) “Sustainability, Relocalization, Citizen Activism and Government Information.”  Dttp: Documents to the People, 43(2), pp..10-13.

Richard Louv (2008) Last child in the woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.

George Monbiot (2014) Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life.

Bill McKibben (1992) The Age of Missing Information.