Rebekkah Smith-Aldrich

UPDATE: The ALA-SLI National Climate Action Strategy Working Group will hold an open forum to introduce a draft Climate Action Strategy for Libraries to ALA members, and to solicit feedback from the field, on Thursday, March 14. All library workers and trustees are invited.

The American Library Association and the Sustainable Libraries Initiative have teamed up to create a National Climate Action Strategy for Libraries to be released later this year. Both organizations have been working to raise awareness in the profession for the need to act with urgency to create communities of practice that can help library workers understand the issue and that can provide the practical approaches to manage the predicted impacts and systemic nature of climate change.

Public and academic libraries should be leaders in moving away from fossil fuels, prioritizing investments in net-zero energy construction, renewable energy, and electric vehicles. This requires commitment from leadership in facility and budget planning. Library administration and governing boards of trustees need to step up to prioritize greenhouse gas emission reduction in their strategic and operational planning.

The New Canaan Library, CT, is leading the way to address human rights in the building product supply chain.

On Earth Day 2022, Suffolk County, NY, Executive Steven Bellone announced a $12 million investment in electric vehicle charging stations. He chose the Lindenhurst Memorial Library—the second library in the country to be certified under the Sustainable Libraries Initiative’s Sustainable Library Certification Program—as the location for the press conference.

There is no more time to waste. Climate action is needed NOW. Libraries should be visible leaders and partner in this effort not only to protect the assets the public has entrusted them with but also to ensure library workers and community members have the support they need, through libraries, in the face of disruption.

As we think through the lessons we have learned over the past four years, one thing is quite clear: the way “we’ve always done things” is not sustainable for the well-being of our communities. We need to seek out those patterns that are emerging to systemically change the policy landscape of our society, economy and the environment and respect that leadership may look different in the coming years.

There is a threadrunning through almost all major headlines in our country this year: racial injustice.

The massive change in life circumstances over the weeks since my last column have been strange, terrible, and beautiful—often all at once.

Unprecedented. Heartbreaking. Heartwarming. These three words have been most prominent in my mind as I observed and consulted with my colleagues, near and far, as they make tough decisions about how to keep their communities and staff healthy in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.