Category: Events

SustainRT: A Conversation with LIS Students

Hosted by Online Education and Membership Committees

View the recorded program on the ALA SustainRT YouTube Channel

Thursday May 3rd

12-1 pm pacific, 1-2 pm mountain, 2-3 pm central, 3-4 pm eastern

ZOOM LINK:

https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/269435146

No need to register. All are welcome, not just students.

We will begin with a brief history of SustainRT, some exciting initiatives, and ideas for getting involved.

Then we’ll open the floor for questions about sustainability in librarianship and how we can infuse our careers with sustainability values and contributions.  

Remember, student membership for SustainRT is free when you become a member of ALA! SustainRT is almost 800 members strong (and growing) and dedicated to fostering regenerative communities and moving toward a more equitable, healthy, and economically viable society.  

Whether you’re able to join the Zoom conversation on May 3rd or not, you can stay up to date through our discussion list, blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

Students can also offer ideas and feedback through this form.

We look forward to connecting with LIS students so you to make a difference in ALA and the profession.  If you would like more information, please contact any of us from the SustainRT Membership Committee.

Invitation to Online Forum sponsored by Special Task Force on Sustainability

CHICAGO — In 2016-2017, the ALA Executive Board appointed a Special Task Force on Sustainability, charged with developing a white paper and recommendations for the ALA Executive Board, with the intent of increasing the adoption and implementation of sustainable practices by the Association, the profession, libraries and the communities they serve.

In its Midwinter 2018 report to the ALA Executive Board, the Task Force co-chairs noted they have focused on two questions to create a vision for the future and to translate that vision into action:

What does it look like if libraries are successful in helping create sustainable, resilient, regenerative communities?

  1. What needs to happen, that is not already happening, to support the Association, profession and libraries realize this vision?

The Task Force on Sustainability now seeks broad input from the ALA community.  To that end, the Task Force will be holding a series of online forums targeting certain populations and capped with a general forum for those who have not had an opportunity to contribute.

The four sessions are all at the following times:  11 a.m. – Noon Pacific/noon – 1 p.m. Mountain/1 – 2 p.m. Central/2 – 3 p.m. Eastern time.

Each forum will be facilitated by a member of the Task Force.  Attendance at each forum will be capped at 100.  The facilitator will have a set of guiding questions, but discussion is otherwise open.  The conversation will be recorded.  These forums will provide critical guidance for the Task Force report to the ALA Executive Board at the 2018 ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans.

If you cannot make any of these dates the Task Force welcomes your input via this online survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ALAsustain

For additional information, see the Midwinter 2018 report of the Task Force, which is available at: http://www.ala.org/aboutala/sites/ala.org.aboutala/files/content/ebd5_2_Task%20Force%20on%20Sustainability_MW18Report.pdf

Please contact Task Force co-chairs Rebekkah Smith Aldrich (rsmith@midhudson.org ) and Rene Tanner (rene.tanner@asu.edu) if you have questions.

Link to ALA News Release: http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2018/03/invitation-online-forum-sponsored-special-task-force-sustainability

 

“You Don’t Have to “Go Big” to Make a Difference” – Webinar archive now available!

Did you miss the webinar on March 1st, You Don’t Have to “Go Big” to Make a Difference: How Our Purchasing Choices and Daily Habits Can Build a More Sustainable Society?

Our presenter for this webinar, Sharon Rowe, CEO and Founder of Eco-Bags Products, Inc., is recognized as a thought leader in social innovation and sustainable, responsible clean supply chain production.  In this recording of the March 1, 2018 SustainRT webinar, she shares her experiences in building a profitable, mission & value aligned business while maintaining a healthy work/life balance – topics covered in her new book “The Magic of Tiny Business: You Don’t Have to Go Big to Make a Great Living”.

Click here to view the webinar archive.

SustainRT at ALA Midwinter, 2018

Are you planning to attend ALA Midwinter 2018?  Make SustainRT part of your conference experience!  Please see the conference schedule for locations.

  • Saturday, 2/10 @ 3-4pm – Business Meeting
  • Saturday, 2/10 @5:30-7:30pm – Social Event!
  • Sunday, 2/11 @1-2:30pm – Discussion: Crisis and Community
  • Monday, 2/12 @10:30-11:30am – News You Can Use: Sustainability Strategies for Libraries and Communities (Symposium on the Future of Libraries)

Nine Reasons for Hope in a World Out of Whack – Webinar Archive Now Available!

Did you miss the webinar on November 9th, 2017, Nine Reasons for Hope in a World Out of Whack, with speaker Ellen Moyer, author of the book Our Earth, Our Species, Our Selves: How to Thrive While Creating a Sustainable World?

Ellen Moyer

Dr. Moyer, a registered professional engineer and a U.S. Green Building Council LEED Accredited Professional, helps government agencies and Fortune 500 companies clean up hazardous waste sites, prevent environmental damage, analyze impacts, and provide educational outreach. She spoke to us about reasons for hope that we can solve dire environmental problems, such as climate change, and shared how we can successfully upgrade to a high-tech and high-nature way of life that will sustain us and our fellow species far into the future. Dr. Moyer also shared the concrete actions that we can take to help ourselves and our world at the same time, including the one most important action for getting started.

Click HERE to view the archived webinar!

SustainRT Webinars for 2017-2018

Nine Reasons for Hope in a World Out of Whack
(Thurs. Nov. 9 12:15-12:45pm EST)

Please join us Thursday, Nov. 9, 12:15 – 12:45 p.m. EST for the Fall 2017 SustainRT webinar.
Our speaker will be Ellen Moyer, author of the book Our Earth, Our Species, Our Selves: How to Thrive While Creating a Sustainable World.

Ellen Moyer

Dr. Moyer, a registered professional engineer and a U.S. Green Building Council LEED Accredited Professional, helps government agencies and Fortune 500 companies clean up hazardous waste sites, prevent environmental damage, analyze impacts, and provide educational outreach. She will talk about reasons for hope that we can solve dire environmental problems such as climate change facing our world and successfully upgrade to a high-tech and high-nature way of life that will sustain us and our fellow species far into the future. Dr. Moyer will also share concrete actions we can take to help ourselves and our world at the same time, including the one most important action for getting started. Attend the webinar on November 9 to find out more!

 

Register HERE. Free and open to all.

 

Upcoming webinar: Transformational Resilience

View the recorded program on the ALA SustainRT YouTube Channel

Please join us for our next SustainRT webinar on Thursday, 6/8/17 from 12:15-12:45 PM (Eastern).

Bob Doppelt will speak to us on the topic, “Transformational Resilience: How Building Human Resilience to Climate Disruption Can Safeguard Society and Increase Well-being.”

REGISTER NOW! 

About our presenter:

Bob Doppelt is Executive Director of The Resource Innovation Group (TRIG), a non-partisan social science-based sustainability and global climate change education, research and technical assistance organization affiliated with the Center for Sustainable Communities at Willamette University, where he is also a Senior Fellow. In addition, Bob is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon where he teaches systems thinking and global warming policy. He has also taught at the Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco and the Bainbridge Graduate Institute on sustainable management.

Bob is the author of Leading Change toward Sustainability: A Change Management Guide for Business, Government, and Civil Society (Greenleaf Publishing, 2003), The Power of Sustainable Thinking: How To Create a Positive Future for the Climate, The Planet, Your Organization and Your Life, (Earthscan Publishing, 2008) and Transformational Resilience: How to Use Climate Change and Related Adversities to Learn, Grow and Thrive (Greenleaf Publishing, 2016). He also writes regular columns on global warming for the Eugene Register-Guard and the Salem Statesman-Journal newspapers and is a frequent speaker at workshops and conferences in the U.S. and Europe.

Check out his website here.

AASHE STARS for Librarians (Webinar)

View a recording of this program on the
ALA SustainRT YouTube Channel

On March 9th, 12:15 – 12:45 PM EST Amy Brunvand will present, “STARS and Beyond:  Adventures of an embedded Librarian in the Campus Sustainability Office.” To register for the webinar, click here.

About the webinar: During the past year Amy Brunvand, an academic librarian at the University of Utah, has been on leave from the library in order to work out of the campus Sustainability Office.   Her main project was helping to compile a Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™ (STARS) report ,a transparent, self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance that is used for ranking by Sierra Magazine and Princeton Green Schools among others.   Along the way she gained insights into what drives campus sustainability and how academic libraries and librarians can get involved in and offer support to sustainability efforts across the whole campus organization.   [30 mins]

Bio: Amy Brunvand is an academic librarian and government information specialist at the University of Utah where she has spent the past year on leave working out of the campus Sustainability Office.  Besides librarianship, she writes a monthly environmental news column for Catalyst magazine (catalystmagazine.net).  She also writes poetry, and her poems have recently appeared in Dark Mountain, Kudzu House Quarterly, saltfront, Terrain.org and the anthology “Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in our Hands.”

Librarian Amy Brunvand waits for the bus in an air pollution filter mask that was distributed as part of a University of Utah student project to call attention to air quality problems.

Missed our last webinar? The recording is now online!

David Selden, National Indian Law Library, spoke about the founding of the Committee on Environmental Sustainability under the American Association of Law Libraries. Their activities include a Conference Travel Offset Project and a Resolution on Sustainability in Law Libraries.

View the RECORDING, slidedeck & resources:

For more information about SustainRT activities and events, click here.

ALA Annual 2017 Speaker!

We are excited to announce that Bill McKibben will be a featured speaker at ALA Annual 2017!

Bill McKibben is co-founder and Senior Advisor at 350.org, an international, grass roots climate movement that leverages people power to develop people-centric solutions to the climate crisis. McKibben is a prolific writer and opened the general public’s eyes to the urgency of climate change back in 1989 with his book The End of Nature, which has been published worldwide in over 24 languages. Among his many related books are Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age; Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet; Maybe One: A Case for Smaller Families; and Hope, Human and Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth.

McKibben suggests that we conceptualize climate change as a threat on the order of World War III and respond accordingly. With this mindset we can make societal shifts similar to those experienced in the 1940’s wartime era and move to renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy storage. There is urgency to his message as climate change is happening more quickly than scientists anticipated. McKibben argues that the status quo is a luxury we cannot afford. The nonviolent war that McKibben proposes will save lives and has the potential to produce millions of jobs.
His address is made possible through the partnership of SustainRT, ALA’s Social Responsibilities Round Table, the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association, and the American Indian Library Association. We are honored and fortunate to have Mr. McKibben join us at ALA Annual to bring us his insights into the role of libraries during a time of climate change.

Date, time, and location of McKibben’s featured address at ALA annual in Chicago are forthcoming.

To help us bring this important program to ALA and support our ongoing work, please consider making a donation to ALA’s Sustainability Roundtable (SustainRT). The instructions to ensure it gets to SustainRT are below. Thank you for anything you can contribute!

To Make a Donation

Online donations are accepted at the Donate to ALA website. Select ALA Roundtables and choose SustainRT for your donation.

If you prefer to mail your donation, please fill out the online form, print it out, and send a check, payable to ALA at:

American Library Association
Development Office
50 East Huron Street
Chicago, IL 60611

The American Library Association is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit institution. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. Our federal tax identification number is 36-2166947.