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Sustainability and LibrariesOctober 24, 2007 It’s a timely passion—exploring sustainable building practices. Between global warming, overpopulation, and the disappearance of many of America’s pollinating bee colonies, sustainable lifestyles are a good way to save money and save resources. (Have you heard about this? Hives that have hosted bees for crop pollination for decades are suddenly empty. Not just one or two, but enough to make it into international agricultural news and the sustainability magazines I read. Even FoxNews.com picked up the story at some point. Apparently, bees only pollinate about 15% of our food crops, but it’s still pretty serious stuff. I’ve added a few links about this at the bottom of the page.) I usually look at information about building green homes, not building green commercial buildings, but the number and quality of commercial buildings going green continues to explode all over the world. It's an exciting trend.With this in mind, I did a Google search for “sustainable library,” and found several pdf files about sustainable library design. I also found references to various recent library construction projects with sustainable elements… Heck, there’s even an International Sustainable Library Development Interest Group connected to the American Library Association! (http://www.ala.org/ala/irrt/irrtcommittees/isld/isld.htm) In fact, the Minneapolis Public Library was built to meet the Minnesota Sustainable Design Guidelines, “and included R-123 chillers, underfloor displacement ventilation, demand-based ventilation and a green roof with storm water cistern system.” (http://www.ashrae.org/publications/detail/16194) For more information about projected energy efficiency of the building, see http://www.mpls.lib.mn.us/ncl_qa.asp and scroll down to the “Will the building be energy efficient?” question. I found it particularly impressive that a minimum of 80% of the original structure will be recycled during the construction process, according to the February 2007 web update. The new library building will also be home to a Sustainable Resources Center. Seattle’s Central Public Library was also recently rebuilt with sustainability in mind. They were able to recycle over 75% of the previous building’s materials, improve energy efficiency by 10% above Seattle energy code requirements, and used locally produced building materials when feasible. Special attention was paid to the air quality inside the building through installation of low-emission carpeting. The library also conducted a two-week re-ventilation process to get rid of all construction dust and chemical residue in the air prior to opening the new building. (http://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=branch_central_sustainable&branchID=1) I’m sure other libraries have been built with sustainability in mind, but these were the first two to pop up on my search. Since they are in very different parts of the country, I think they are reasonably illustrative of what’s out there. Green construction practices generally fall into one of five categories:
Oh, and here are some links to various websites and ads from concerned parties about the Bees. http://www.endangeredspecieshandbook.org/projects_bees.php http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091107G.shtml http://beemaid.com/BeeMaid/Company/Press_Spring2006.htm Posted by Staci B Elliott on October 24, 2007 | Comments (0)
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