>> JENNIFER: I will go ahead and get our recording started.

Rebekkah has created this resource as a guide for you to extend your learning on the topic.

It's an excellent tool for you to work through this learning together with colleagues.

There are questions for reflection.

You can customize the guide if you have specific steps or activities that you'd like your team to take.

This is your tool and it's a guide that takes you through the whole series.

So we will begin kicking it off today and know that resource is yours to use throughout the series.

I'm so excited to welcome our presenter and the lead around this amazing collaboration, Rebekkah Smith Aldrich comes to us with many hats on.

She is the executive director of the Mid-Hudson Library System in New York.

And she is the author of many books and resources that we will hear about today.

Welcome, Rebekkah, and thank you so much for joining us.

Joining WebJunction on this effort to bring all of this great learning and resources through this six month collaboration.

As you folks know, we will be hosting five more webinars.

We will be sharing additional resources and articles in the commonning months.

Welcome, Rebekkah, and thank you so much for all of your fantastic work.

We are so excited to have you here today.

>> REBEKKAH: Jennifer, this moment is like a dream come true.

I cannot thank you enough for partnering with Sustainable Libraries Initiative.

To come together on such an important topic that we are kicking off here today with this new series.

I want to say thank you to our host and organizers.

But to everyone in the audience for taking the time to put this on your calendar to and to spend some time thinking about a really important topic.

At least, I think so.

And hopefully you do too.

But our goal here today is to really kick off the series with basic concepts, basic vocabulary, and to give you strong foundation for the remainder of the series.

Which I will point out a couple of times along the way here.

We are going to build on the work you are seeing today throughout the next five months.

But we're going to start here.

Real broad.

And I want to reiterate what Jennifer said during the intro, we welcome your comments, your questions, the resources you know about to be shared in the chat.

It will make the experience for everyone that much richer.

You are welcome to share questions there.

We will definitely get to them, I hope, by the time we wrap up here this afternoon.

But I just want to say I might be one person on a screen, but there are hundreds of people behind me working on this project that we call the Sustainable libraries Initiative.

We have a dedicated board.

And we have a community of over 200 libraries working on issues related to the content you will see today.

A number of which you will hear from throughout the series today.

I think that is pretty cool.

We are basing this on realtime experiences, practice in the field, what is working and what is not.

I hope you find today useful and the rest of the series ends upbringing new ideas to your library and community.

Let's kick things off here by starting very, very broad.

I always like to start broad and will narrow in on some of the more specific issues that I'm guessing you are interested in here today.

As we think about the enormity of the work and the context, sometimes we get very focused on the task in front of us.

I always try to keep a very important quote from Alvin Toffler who wrote "Future shock" many decades ago.

That quote is "we need to think about all the small things so when we are working on the big things, all the small things go in the right direction."

As we think of the enormity of the earth, the impact of climate change on the earth, we have to keep in mind there are over 8 billion people on planet earth.

There is 8.7 species of plants and animals on planet earth.

197 square miles on planet earth.

We are talking about an enormous place that has many people.

Sometimes with competing interests.

So this is a massive context, shall we say, within which we work.

As we think about all the little choices we make, every single day, we have to understand the ripple effect of those choices.

And today, I hope, is that call to action for all of us to focus and to have some urgency around the choices we are making moving forward.

Because we have a much greater understanding of how it is impacting people around the world.

So as we think about what is going on around the world right now and, of course, we are talking about the context of climate change here, I don't think you can go a day across this summer where you are not hearing a headline of some kind of record setting heat wave.

Here in New York we had 1,000 year flood last week.

It just narrowly missed my system service area about when we saw what was happening to the south of us.

It was absolutely devastating.

Each of you are located in a part of the world that is probably experiencing climate change maybe a little differently from the person on the chat list next to you.

But the truth is, climate scientists are saying that, unfortunately, these will be called the "good Ole days".

That even for the next 30 years, even if we did everything we were supposed to do to mitigate climate change, we will see increasingly bad, severe, and frequent-severe weather moving forward.

Since 1980s, there has been a 78% increase in what they call "billion dollar storms" those storms that are so big it does $1 billion worth of damage.

78% increase since the 1980s.

We have gone T from 1 billion event every 80 days and  $1 billion event every 18 days.

The headlines are undenial.

Folks are suffering in a variety of ways from the disruption being caused by climate change.

And, lucky, that has been less undenial these days.

And the results are quite visible.

Hopefully we are seeing more people in communities pulling together to help one another through the issues that are arising because of the impacts of climate change.

So you might not realize this, but actually the most deadly impact of climate change is going to be heat stress that is linked to climate change.

The current estimates here, you can see an additional, almost 40,000 deaths a year starting in 2030, moving through 2050.

Those are just the current estimates.

It's an unfortunate number I keep my eye on and it does go up through a regular basis.

If you live in a part of the world that didn't used to have heat as a problem, it may be a growing problem for you.

We were just speaking with folks from the Vermont State Library.

And a lot of libraries and homes in Vermont don't have air conditioning, but they certainly need it now.

As we think about libraries and the role they play, this is a pretty severe reminder that something so simple as the temperature outside can be life altering, if not life threatening, to the people in our communities who are the most vulnerable people in our communities.

So a very relatable issue.

I'm sure most people on the call have experienced very uncomfortable heat, if not, debilitating heat at some point in your life.

We're also facing what is going to be called the great displacement.

As we think about the climate change effects on our geography.

It's predicted over 1 billion people will be displaced because of the impacts of climate change.

It might be rising sea levels, it may be the increase in hurricanes in certain areas of the world.

When you think about the recent news stories in the U.S. about California and Florida where insurance companies are refusing to ensure homes.

New homes in these areas.

You can see there will be some areas that some folks may decide is too risky.

Both for personal health standpoint and a financial standpoint to stay.

So we will be seeing folks moving around a lot in the next few decades.

And it's going to impact not only the people that are moving, but the places that folks move to.

So increasing the amount of traffic we see coming in and out of places that might not think they have a climate change problem, but all of a sudden they are facing a demographic shift or a housing crunch in their area.

Which we are already hearing about for a variety of reasons throughout the country.

As you think about the impacts of climate change, it could look different from area to area thinking about geography.

And that has been part of the barrier to getting us all on the same page of working on this issue.

It has impacted each of us and where we live in different ways.

It looks so different from area to area in the country.

But at this point, we have to acknowledge it's impacting everyone everywhere and we have to all pull together to work on it.

So this is my last bummer of a slide, I promise, but I think this is an important thing to note.

The medical community, over 200 medical journals, actually, including the Lanset in 2021 released the same editorial.

That climate change is the number one threat to global health.

They issued that editorial in the middle of COVID.

And they said climate change is the biggest threat to global health.

So as we think about this one sentence that every single child alive today will negatively impacted by climate change, it is the scope and scale we have every seen before.

And we got a very acute feeling about this during COVID.

We know what that can look like globally.

This is a slower moving disaster.

This will impact a wider view of people.

So we've got to pull together in this movement.

That is why we are so excited to be partnering with WebJunction on this work to broaden the number of people who are sharing ideas and what they are doing to combat some of these issues and help build community resilience.

The American Library Association last year issued their own call to action.

Quoting the Lansing report about climate change being the single greatest threat to health.

Quoting the United Nations Surgeon General.

And it is very hard to hear this when the library profession is facing down censorship attacks, attacks on our integrity, and really battling the book ban, I don't want to say trend, but it feels like a tsunami throughout our world here in the United States.

This is a very acute, politically charged issue in our country.

But we can't lose sight of massive global issue.

This call to action is a unifying moment that we are doing our best to build on the momentum year.

With anyone who wants to work on this topic, as well.

In a way that will have a positive impact as we move forward.

So I love this quote from project Draw Down.

Nothing better than a bunch of climate scientists getting together and agreeing on what is the most important things to be working on.

They have a best selling book, it's an easy read.

It can really help wrap your mind around the basic things we should be focused on moving forward.

But the concept this idea and problem is so large that every job must be a climate job moving forward.

It doesn't matter your industry, it doesn't matter what position you hold in the organization.

We all must own our responsibility and recognize our sphere of influence to help move things in the right direction.

We want to keep all the small things going in the right direction to address the big issues that are confronting our communities.

So every job is a climate job.

This thinking, this mindset is what we are going for through the work we are doing.

And recognizing where our opportunities lie.

So thank you to the American Library Association who in 2019 declared sustainability a core value of our profession.

It was the one of the most unifying things that happened in my profession on this topic of dealing with climate change.

This work is so critical and it's really challenging the talk about.

But the American Library a association took a chance and said let's declare a core value and have it an entry point where people are like, okay, but what does that mean?

We want to get people thinking about a topic and moving in the same direction and pulling in a way that will have an immaterial pact.

This idea of collective impact is behind the work we are doing.

I love the work we do.

I'm a volunteer for this project.

I have such privilege being invited all over the place to speak about this.

What I encounter are folks all over the world who get it, who understand we've got to do something different.

But a lot of people and a lot of organizations are operating in isolation.

They've got good ideas.

They are running around.

Let's do this, let's do that, maybe that will work.

If we can all pull together and see where the points of emphasis are and work together in those directions, we would have a much bigger impact.

And that is what the scope and scale of climate change calls for in this moment.

So that is part of our goal here through the work we've been doing with the American Library Association, OCLC and WebJunction.

Let's start talking the same language and where our efforts will have the biggest impact.

We have all worked through our equity diversity, and inclusion work.

ALA and SLI adopted the bottomline idea.

It was a critical moment.

We wanted people to start talking the same language.

We really are not just talking about going green.

We are talking about the whole economic system of the globe.

We are talking about treating every human with human dignity.

These are really big ideas.

How do you even get started with that?

How are you not so overwhelmed you get paralyzed by that?

We get people to think differently, find the balance amongst these three things.

Of course, you want good environmental stewardship that has been missing a lot of the decisions we make in libraries.

We have to make sure the decisions we are making on that front are socially equitable and economically feasible for institutions in our communities.

You can use this framework to think internally about choices you make at your library, but also externally in how you evaluate the health of a community or a government or a country.

So as we start to think about the scale and scope, again, of what we are doing, this is supposed to be, and has been proven to be, a scalable framework through which to make the better decisions.

I just want to be clear here, we are not looking for profection, we -- perfection, we are looking for progress.

This is a framework that can help us do that.

And so at the sustainable libraries initiative # that has been helping us.

O to do work in this area to become certified.

It is something we are practicing.

Not just preaching.

We will be telling a lot of stories about this.

The goal here is libraries are seen as a sustainability leader.

That we have that responsibility and we are respected as such in our communities, campuses, and schools.

That we have a responsibility to do this work.

I hope we've got some fans of the Lorax in the audience today.

"If someone like you doesn't care an awful lot, nothing will change".

So we have to step up.

I want to pause before we go much further.

It has to be contextualized in your local.

Your local geography, the aspirations of your community, campus, or school.

It has to be really respectful of local businesses, local artists, local farms.

You have to have the flavor of local throughout this work.

I can't tell you your flavor of local.

That is the work you have to do to find out what is most important and the biggest opportunities to work together in your community or on your campus or school.

I'm putting that there as a place holder for you to think about, do you know what the biggest challenges and opportunities are in your community?

And who else is out there working on topics that are related to this issue that you will want to align yourself with.

That is a little home work for you later on.

But I really want to unpack the idea of climate action.

We have defined sustainability opinion we want to create more healthier, vibrant, resilient communities.

But how are we going to do that work?

Of course, there is the every day decisions that we make, but there are large categories of work that fall under this big umbrella of climate action.

That is a phrase that gets thrown around just as the word "sustainability" got thrown around awhile ago.

So I will just say, this is the way we think about it at the sustainability libraries initiative.

I think a lot have grown up in this work thinking of one of these three elements.

Which is climate change mitigation.

It's the good old let's reduce the greenhouse gas emissions so it doesn't get worse or hit those projections.

This is how climate change is caused.

So let's start mitigating it so that it's not as bad in the future.

But you've got to combine that with the reality where we sit today.

Climate change is already here.

We already talked about the headlines of the week.

We have to help communities right now.

Not just hoping it will get better in the future.

We are well past that point.

We have to marry this work with the idea that we have to focus on disaster preparedness and community resilience work to help people be prepared, to survive, and thrive in the aftermath.

But this work cannot be done in a vacuum.

It has to be done with the overlay of climate justice.

And you will see in the learners guide, there is a whole session coming up later in this series, it is such a big topic, it ties into so much of the work that libraries do.

The way I think about it, we have to infuse empathy, respect, and understanding in the past, present, and future as we move forward in the realities of climate change.

We have to respect the fact that really the people who caused climate change and the severity of climate change are going to likely be less impacted than people who are already marginalized and visual and had little to do with what is going on with climate change here today.

We have to keep in mind with disaster preparedness and resiliency work, not everyone has the means to evacuate.

We have to be very sensitive to the realities of our past, present, and future in climate action work.

So it's the combination of these three things which I say make up Clark action itself.

So what we will do for the remainder of our time today, is to unpack each of these terms a little bit more.

And throughout the series, we will take a much deeper dive on all three of these things.

So you have stories and examples and templates that help you bring together some climate action planning in your library or professional position.

So we will dive in here to climate change mitigation.

I find it very easy to talk about.

And I bet most of you are very familiar with this work.

We've got all the information from the EPA that is  demonstrated.

Carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas.

It's impacting the oceans.

It's impacting biodiversity.

It's impacting weather.

Which we talked about a lot here.

So focusing in on how to reduce CO2 emissions is a primary climate mitigation technique.

As we think about, how do we do that then?

How do we tackle it?

Let's go back to the data again.

You can see transportation and electricity use, is where we are finding the biggest emissions for carbon dioxide.

We don't get to impact that as much as we might like.

As we think about where are our opportunities, we have personal choices I'm sure you are making about how you move around the country or the world or what you get to work or what type of vehicle do you invest in?

All of those big choices you make personally, but there are also choices to be made at the professional level, as well, for our institutions.

Electricity usage in our buildings.

If we have opportunities to impact the energy consumption of an existing building.

Or when you have the opportunity to do a major renovation or a big construction project, we've got to prioritize reducing the amount of electricity it takes for fossil fuels to run those buildings.

Two major areas of work.

So I just brought a couple examples of folks that are in the sustainable library certification program.

Real quick.

But in the future parts of the series I will take a much deeper dive.

The Hendrick Hudson Free Library.

Early adopter of solar power for their library.

Not just the application of it, the education of it.

This is a big plat panel monitor right in the children's room.

Educating people about why the library made that choice.

What it's resulting in for the planet.

What it means for the library's operation budget.

Why you might want to do this at home.

We are educational institutions.

So we want to make visible the choices that we are making that are done very thoughtfully on behalf of the people that we serve.

As the San Diego County Library which is the largest library in our certification program out in California.

This is the first library in California to jump on the band wagon.

But not the last.

Thanks to California State Library.

But this is a county municipal library where they don't build new buildings that are net zero energy.

You can see they transitioned their book mobiles to electric vehicles.

And all 33 of their branches are going to have electric vehicle charging stations addressing that transportation issue as much as they can and the choices they have control over in that setting.

We all know California is probably ahead of the curve on climate action work, but what a model they are setting there.

And a glimpse into the future that we will see in many, many areas.

The Concord Free Library in Massachusetts.

One of our first Massachusetts libraries to join the program.

Honestly, one of the first libraries to have full blown sustainability plan.

They wrote down their goals.

How they will reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

How they will invest in transportation issues.

They put it down on paper.

Everyone understands the goal.

They are now Marching toward those goals and doing so as a team.

It's a beautiful thing to behold.

We will talk about their story.

Now these are things we are doing that.

Of course we are doing that.

We heard these stories over and over again.

How many of you have that written into your facility plans?

How many of you are talking about the choices you've made to reduce your energy consumption?

Part of the work is getting on the same page, educating people who make decisions, creating visible goals, and working in a way that is accountable.

Your decisions may be large or small, but the awareness and the education on these topics can make huge differences in your organization.

In my own organization, the more work we have done for my board to understand the issue, has caused them to prioritize solar panels.

So it can take awhile to teach people about the importance of these issues, but really, most once reasonable people understand what is going on and how they can be a positive influence, they will usually do the right thing.

Which is a really good sign for the future.

Climate change adaptation was the second part of that climate action equation that we put together for you.

This is the kind of reality check that climate change is here.

We've got to work together to build our community resilience.

And I know many of you have heard from Michele, the deputy state librarian in New Jersey.

She will be speaking during this series, as well.

You're welcome.

She's amazing.

She is one of the forerunners in our profession of talking about the importance of not just disaster preparedness work that we do in libraries, but also our contributions to a communities resilience before, during, and after disruptions in our communities.

So the number one thing we have to do here, is be realistic.

What is the vulnerability where you live?

Most people will rally together to work on that because they understand the risk or seen the devastation that can come when that risk lands in that town or that area.

So I think that's a great way to bring people together when we are realistic about what is likely to happen because of climate change.

And we start planning around that.

So there is two components to climate change adaptation.

Disaster preparedness which is a familiar topic.

Having a disaster preparedness plan.

What actions from your collection you will salvage first.

Where you keep the backups of important documents in your organization.

But disaster repairedness also means we are thinking much bigger about the role we play.

Both for our communities, as well as, our institutional operations.

This is one of our libraries that is not only certified through the certification program but the director serves on the advisory board.

This is a library that was greatly impacted by Super Storm Sandy back in 2012.

And the director who was the assistant director at the time now the director, she keeps in mind.

We didn't do a great job.

We don't want to see that happen again.

There is a high likelihood we will see devastating storms like that on the coast again.

They worked hard to build strong relationships with the first responders.

Who might just hear snippets of fear about what is happening.

We need to empower them to understand what is going oven and to understand the adults in the room whether it's their home, their classroom, their library, their government are paying attention, are working to help everyone, and that they are empowered to think about how to help themselves, as well.

You can see here the wacky weather, are you prepared program?

You can see the much less fund whole generator being installed.

The other part of this work that is super tied to community resilience, is this climate preparedness work that needs to happen throughout our communities.

From offering programs to making sure our library workers are prepared.

We are doing a whole session in this series just on these topics.

Because it's such a hot topic right now.

And we need more libraries to have these plans.

Last year we participated in a national research study on the disaster preparedness preparedness on libraries.

And they have no plans at all related to this topic.

We want to find ways to make it easier for libraries.

And to contribute to community resilience out in the community.

I hi lie recommendation the climate resilience hub program.

It's a free program.

It's easy to get certified.

It makes you look so good.

And it's so easy to do.

We highly encourage you to join this program.

Again, free and easy.

Very few things in our life are like that.

What does this look like?

We are talking about based on your geography?

Five minutes before I started this event, I'm getting all of my libraries listed as cooling centers.

Thinking about what role we can play given the assets we already have and do we need to tweak these assets to go a little further sometimes?

Maybe?

But it might be worth it if that's what's most important in your geography.

Food security is going to be a very big issue in the future.

The disruption of droughts, as well as, flooding, will be disrupting our food supply chain.

We got a feel for that during COVID.

And it was scary.

Thinking about what is the food supplies like in your community?

We are seeing all sorts of creative solutions here.

This might be at the extreme end, but in the Syracuse area here in New York, they have a library farm.

They use part of their property, you can use your library card to borrow a plot of land to grow your own fruits and vegetables.

They are also making their own hot sauce as a fundraiser if you want to help out the library farm.

Here's an examable of a little bit more scalable.

The Concord library in Maine.

Simple programs.

Almost every library can do on growing literacy.

Ecoliteracy.

Food literacy.

Teaching people how the natural world works is part of the reason we are probably in this situation is because we forgot to keep teaching people how the natural world works.

And to have respect for it.

That focus on ecoliteracy.

How we train our library workers and communities.

And connecting younger people with the information about how the natural world works.

Where does the food come from?

Where does clean water come from?

Who makes decisions about this?

What do you want the future to look like.

We want to inspire kids to be empowered and responsible as they grow up and make decisions for their next generation.

Just like we are doing today.

I want to say two more examples I have here for you.

We can do programs just on these two.

I wish we had more time and we could.

But the Repair Cafe program or maybe you know it as the Fix It Clinic.

This was born out of the Netherlands.

And in the east coast we have the most Repair Cafes outside of the Netherlands it's such a popular program.

But I think it embodies this thinking.

That you invite people who know how to fix stuff, to teach neighbors how to fix their stuff.

And they call it a cafe because neighbors are coming together to learn from one another and to respect that wisdom that people bring to the table and are so generous in sharing with their neighbors.

At the same time, we are doing amazing things.

We are teaching skills.

Keeping things out of landfills.

Celebrating the right to repair all of our stuff.

Maybe not fall for the latest gadget.

As we tackle larger problems in our community to prepare our own stuff, change the way things are happening, by respecting people who have wisdom about how things work in our community.

It's just a little microcosm of what we need to see happen on a very grand scale when it comes to climate change.

This last example, I know a point of privilege, it's in my own system.

But I'm really, really proud of it.

We have partnered with the climate partners of Hudson valley.

Each of these libraries has specialized collections of books that related to food security and climate action.

We have a seed library tied into this special collection, as well as, gardening tools you can borrow.

The Yours truly is not you the stuff, but be a catalyst for learning and convening.

We have overlaid these locations with what is called climate-smart communities in our state.

It's a state program where municipalities have adopted state programs.

That will be reducing the greenhouse emissions and problem solving on the private front.

We want libraries to be catalysts for good work.

We want them to be accelerators for this work.

Proof is in the pudding.

We are in our third year of it trying to make good things happen.

>> JENNIFER: Rebekkah, I wanted to jump in before you move on to the next section to point out somebody mentioned an adaptation in progress.

Noting that when they are planning performer events, that no outdoor events can be hosted with a heat index over 90 degrees.

So they've had to adapt location and time for certain library performers during the summer.

I thought that was a really good example of a small, you know, action that demonstrates the adaptation.

>> And puts people at the center of the decision-making.

Human health.

We want to make sure people are healthy when they are accessing our performances.

That is a good example of small things we do that are so thoughtful.

>> JENNIFER: Absolutely.

Thank you.

>> REBEKKAH: Thanks, Jennifer.

We talked about that third component of the climate action.

Equation needs to be climate justice throughout everything we do.

Climate justice is a very strong phrase that we use.

that we don't make people suffer needless I will when we have the power to do things better, more fairly, and in a more equitable manner.

Climate justice can take many forms.

And you will see it is a rather complicated topic, as you can imagine.

That is why we have devoted an entire of this series to climate justice and the work that is happening in this space is tied to very global issues on the topic and local issues on the topic.

So a very complicated concept, perhaps, to talk about.

But one thing I want to put in front of you, there is this little story that really helps -- really demonstrate what we are talking about here.

I strongly suggest this book.

I love it.

I know that sounds weird.

And you might recognize the name of the author of this book.

He wrote "palaces for the people" which also results in the -- I'm sorry, thank you.

Also speaks to the importance of libraries, in particular, in that book.

So we know this is good people.

This is his first boot.

"Heat Wave" which talking about a disaster in the city of Chicago which was a heat wave.

Who had a higher survivability rate throughout the city of Chicago based on social aspects?

It acknowledges the fact that climate change is not a thing that happens in our communities.

It impacts folks that are vulnerable and marginalized far worse.

As we can see here in this review of the work, a natural disaster is always a human made disaster because of the social conditions in our communities.

This idea of cultural engineering in the results in the face of climate change is and what happens in these environments is something that is a big part of this work.

The intersections go hand-in-hand with climate action work.

So Jennifer, if you don't mind, giving me back control of the screen, that would be super helpful so we can show folks this dashboard that we use to summarize this whole climate action world that we are working on here.

Thanks so much.

So when we think about all the different things we talked about, it's like everything we just touched on.

It's everything.

How do you keep track of that?

How do you measure?

We are a fan of the Kate.

She wrote this fabulous book, doughnut economics.

It may not be the first thing you reach for but so well written.

As I was reading it, there was a moment where I want to high five someone so bad.

She talked about what libraries are so good about.

When she talked about how to shift the economy for the future that gets us to where we need to be.

So she uses this idea, the theory of doughnut of economics.

Where we can't just think about money.

We have to think about the economy.

We have to think about social equity.

Does this sound familiar?

It's like the triple bottom line.

She has created this dashboard that measures the ceiling that is necessary to have a healthy environment, the social foundation that is necessary to respect the people in the environments, the societies, the systems that we operate in.

All with a goal.

And if we can envision a doughnut for a moment, the lovely center for a traditional looking doughnut, the safe space for humanity.

Doesn't that sound like a good idea?

I will just say we love this so much we actually wrote a whole chapter about it in the book libraries on sustainability from ALA additions.

If you want the more condensed version that does the thinking for you, you can borrow that book.

I'm sure you can find it in world cat.

But we were so excited about this.

She talks about the knowledge comments.

Hey, that's us!

They talk about transitioning to think about a 21st century economist.

To bring in things that were out of control and make them more balanced and fair for the people of our communities.

She has created this dashboard.

You can find one for most countries in the world now have used this measurement to understand where emphasis is necessary.

It would be great to have this locally.

The best thing we can do is at the national level.

It starts to help you understand there is work to be done here, work to be done here.

How do we prioritize what needs to get done?

That has to be done on a local context.

Right?

So I want to make sure we get to your questions.

I just want to point out here that the work we are doing is that you cannot change the way people think over night.

Right?

We're talking about a mindset that you need to have to make decisions to identify priorities, who are you going to work with to make things better?

How do you make your library as responsive, relevant, and respective as possible.

It will take alignment in ways with I have never seen before.

This mindset shift not going to happen over night.

How are we going to do this work and find our allies?

I fall back on Arthur Ashe's wonderful quote.

Because all you can do is move forward from today.

"Start where you are.

Use what you have.

Do what you can."

When you find new people that think this way and allies emerge, things start to happen.

And I'm speaking from experience.

As someone who for I would say ten years, felt she was screaming into the wind about greening your library.

It wasn't until I got into a room with 20 other people here in New York I said this has got to go somewhere different.

And all of a sudden we have momentum going.

And I'm here talking to you today.

A mere eight years later.

It all started with this whole, "we've got to do something".

What are we going to do?

This is what my brain felt like for many years.

I was trying all of these different things.

It wasn't until I started working together with like-minded people that we found a path forward.

That is what the Sustainable Library is built on.

This idea of change management.

Something has to give.

Something has to change.

So this is a very, perhaps, well trot path of change management.

You can see here John Kotter.

We've got to convey that sense of urgency of what is going on here.

We have to find a coalition of like-minded people and really have a vision for change.

What does this look like if we are successful?

How do we articulate it using words, concepts, and visuals?

How do we remove the obstacles if people say we have done it that way.

That can't be done.

How do we undo that thinking and find new ways to go forward?

And sometimes that means, as all of you managers out there know, let's create small wins.

As people see it working they will get more and more excited and build on those wins.

And that is what is behind the Sustainable Libraries Initiative.

Our whole concept, how do we take that change management for the purposes of climate change and what needs to happen, help the library profession build that sense of urgency, find their coalition, and have those winds that will result in more healthy, resilient communities.

All of our work goes right back to the triple bottom line.

Everything you see us do comes back to this core concept of balance amongst these three things.

It touches on so much relevant work libraries are doing today.

A lot of the time what we say to people, it may you mean to speak about it differently.

That is part of this work too.

Story telling of what we do why we do and why it matters so much to the people that we serve.

We have identified these four characteristics of sustainable libraries.

You will hear this threaded throughout all six sections.

The libraries themselves must be strong and authentic.

We have to do the work from the inside out.

Our own policies, the way we operate our facilities, the way we design and curate collections, programs, partnerships, all needs to come from this place of authenticity that is based on community needs and priorities.

We have to own our role to play the ideal role in social cohesion and civic participation.

These are the key ingredients to getting people out of their homes, talking to each other, respecting each other, and making collaborative decisions that are good for everyone.

Not just small factions of people that have more money than other factions of people.

And then, of course, the two traditional areas of climate action.

Mitigation and adaptation.

These are all things that need to be embedded into our strategic thinking, managerial plans we create, and the overall goals of where we are trying to go as an institution.

These are all things we can be working towards.

So I will just real quick point out, you have links to resources in the page that Jennifer shared at the beginning of the event.

You can download the road map to sustainability.

It's a free resource.

OCLC invested to help us overhaul the mobile app.

It's a personal tool to capture the things you are hearing about.

We mentioned several times there is over 100 libraries in the sustainable library certification program.

And 12 categories, 140 actions.

Practice, practice, practice.

How do we make better decisions on behalf of the people that work with us and the people that we serve both locally and globally.

You can learn from the stories of the people that are in the certification program.

You can learn from the folks that are doing the work.

Report on what they are doing.

How they are doing it.

Just look under the members button and you can see the final reports of those that have finished the program.

So you've got a lot of opportunities coming up here in the next five months to go deeper on some of the topics we have touched on here in our first session.

We will take a deeper dive on that climate action planning idea.

Taking apart that equation and start morphing into realistic steps and ideas how we create actionable plans that we can work on in our libraries.

We're going to be hearing from three really special people on September 26th.

We have Michele from the state library of New Jersey.

We have a representative from FEMA and VOAD.

That we can really learn from.

In the fall, we will see that focus on climate justice.

How to do programs that really demonstrate we are living our values out loud.

We have to find out who just told us that climate adaptation story.

That is the kind of stuff we are talking about.

It's both what you do in the program but how you roll out that program.

What are your operational practices for programs?

And we will pull it all together in December in the end and talk about this idea of collective impact.

Large scale efforts to engage our communities in things that matter.

And being a catalyst for social cohesion and civic participation.

That is really one of the greenest things we can do as one of my friends once said.

Is actually get out there and participate and shape the future of our communities.

So, Jennifer, I'm going to wrap up by saying, there is no shortage of ideas out there.

I can throw ideas out there every day.

But I just want to say here, the key here, is the urgency.

We can chat all day long.

But if we don't actually get to work, we will not get anywhere.

If you take nothing else away from the talk here today and the conversations you're having in the chat, I hope it's the idea, we have to do something and do it now.

Picking that path forward, we hope the rest of the series helps you to pick that path forward and learn from folks that are doing this work across the world.

Jennifer, thank you so much.

If there are any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

>> JENNIFER: Fantastic.

So much information, obviously, and I think people are definitely excited to continue on in this series.

There was a question someone asked about, will we have the opportunity to try building an action plan?

>> REBEKKAH: So definitely there is going to be resources and templates that help you go in that direction.

Certainly, it's one of those things it's hard to make a scalable version of.

Given the variety of experiences.

I don't have a one-size fits all template, but I hope to give you resources that will be a strong starting point.

>> JENNIFER: As I mentioned in terms of the learner guide, I will post the direct link.

It's on all the webinar pages, as well.

It's the same guide for the whole series.

And it's a word document.

So know that you can customize this guide.

So, perhaps, I mean, I think the idea of an action plan, add another section at the bottom for more robust action planning process.

If there is steps you identify as we move through for your particular situation in your library, know you can customize that guide to make it work for you, as well.

Here's a question.

Do you refer to the U.N. sustainable development goals?

>> REBEKKAH: Good question.

We respect the work the U.N. has done.

And it would be awesome if everyone adopted them and we worked within that framework.

But that is not the way the world worked in 2016.

Early 2015 when they came out.

And released after decades of excellent work across the globe.

Part of the problem was, when they were released, the political climate in the United States was very anti-United Nations.

You saw very little traction on the sustainable climate goals.

We needed to find new paths forward.

But you will find the work of the sustainable development goals in the work that we are doing.

You will see a respect for the 17 categories.

We have coded all the categories to the sustainable development goals.

If you have a municipality that requires you to report, you can tie your work right into that framework.

It's definitely part of the stew of the work that is going on here.

I would 51 here in the United States those goals -- I would say here in the United States those goals haven't had the impact I thought they would have.

We have to find ways to connect with that work that gets people going.

Strong respect for that work and definitely in the background of a lot of what we are doing.

We are seeing an emerging group of work, you are seeing new tools come out of the American Library Association for reporting.

Amazing work being done by the Los Angeles Public Library.

If we see that urging in other areas, just know you have a lot of support in that area.

>> Fantastic.

Here's a question.

What do you recommend to academic libraries striving to accomplish more sustainable goals?

Is especially with there being multi-departmental separation.

>> I hope you noticed we are part of our certification program.

We have a version for public libraries and a version for school librarians.

Out of the recognition that the libraries within the different aspects of our environment are wildly different.

So you don't control your facility.

Part of our tips for academic libraries, is to figure out who is doing what on campus?

Has the university President signed a climate agreement?

Or set goals on climate change?

Or is there a sustainability office or officer on the campus?

What are they doing?

Are there environmental clubs on campus.

What are they doing?

Find out what is going on first and can you align the library with that work.

We are working with several libraries that said nope, nothing going on here.

And they were the first to do good work in this area.

That ended up drawing a whole host of new partners to them.

I would really strongly suggest you check out the story of the Valencia college.

They are the latest to be certified in the program.

They have a multi-branch library.

And you can see their story of all the good stuff they did.

Aligning with the sustainability officer was their very first step.

And it resulted in a library representative being invited to higher and higher level meetings on campus.

It really raised the profile and opportunities came out of the wood work.

>> Excellent.

I'm hoping there are others of you in academic libraries that continue to join the series and chime in.

We would like to hear from you.

Here's a good reminder.

We know that more than half of the folks that come to WebJunction for learning come from small and rural libraries.

And somebody has said, the ideas we have heard so far today are great but they are way out of reach for my tiny one-personal rural library.

I hope to see something we might be able to do in the resources provided.

Can you talk a little bit about some of the libraries that I know you have worked with and what you are hearing from small and rural libraries?

>> I would love to.

I work in a system that serves small and rural libraries.

We have a cohort of Vermont libraries, all of them are small and rural in our program.

So we have tons of examples of small and rural libraries rolling up their sleeves and doing this work.

And our small and rural library contingent were early adopt tours.

They were the ones that live so close to the bone with our communities where we understand how critical.

So many of them got their start thanks to disaster preparedness work.

And finding out how to be a part of those networks.

Every library has to make 82 sessions about policies.

Every library has to purchase stuff.

Every library is planning programs.

We are not necessarily asking you to do more or to spend more, we are asking that in these decisions you are making, policies, you are writing, programs you are planning, can they align with some of this work that will bring community together on these topics?

Mad respect for small and rural libraries.

That is my world every day here with my 66 libraries.

I have to say, I don't actually think it matters what size library you are or what type library you are, there are entry points all over the place for this work.

>> Fantastic.

And I just love seeing our WebJunction alumni colleague Beth in the house.

She is interested in hearing a little bit from you about partnerships.

Libraries can really benefit partnering with other nonlibrary organizations that are focused on their work.

Are there key organizations national or local that are receptive to working with libraries?

And she provides a couple suggestions.

Green building counsel and international living future institute.

>> Such a good question.

It's no one library that is going to save the day on the topic.

We have to find our allies that are working in a similar path.

I would say there is no over arching list that we have created.

But it is something that the libraries in our program report on.

We see trends.

We see trends of alignment.

Those that are doing specific climate action work or environmental restoration or conservation work.

We are seeing alignment with master gardener groups.

Cooperative extensions.

The first responder community.

And there is different aspects of the first responder community that you will hear about in the third session of this series.

There is both the immediate first responder like the traditional things that we think of.

Fire, EMT, and police.

But there is this whole other -- it was unknown to me a few years ago, the VOAD system.

These spontaneous volunteer groups.

How we pull together the resources and assets of a community in the best advantage of a community.

That is an untapped resource for libraries.

Food justice work, emergency repairedness, disaster recovery work, and those working on environmental conservation work.

Those are three easy categories.

And that will lead you to localized things in your community.

>> Fantastic.

There is a great question about tips and tricks for forming a sustainability committee at your library.

And I just want to say, as we begin this six month series together, this is a great time to suggest bringing together a group of people, you know, you can call it a committee or a cohort of learners or a community group, whatever it looks like to you, but using this learning as an incentive to create that committee would be a great place to start.

I'm sure Rebekkah has ideas as well.

>> I can speak from my own experience, I first had to sell the idea to my administration.

This is before I was the executive director.

But I had to convince our then executive director, this was worth the capacity of our organization to spend time on.

And I really, he made me work for it.

I really had to hone making my case for why this mattered.

I had to really sell it from the things that he was working on at the time in terms of the financial viability of our organization.

Making sure our member libraries find us to be valuable and responsive.

I really had to work hard.

I have to admit.

To sell it to him.

And then I had to find brave souls that were willing to sit down for the first iteration of our sustainability team.

And have common goals and vocabulary and agree what we were going to work on.

We used the sustainable library program to organize ourselves.

To create a purpose statement of why we existed, what we plan to work on.

We did benchmarking work to measure our current electricity use.

Our current way stream contributions.

Our current water usage.

And then we started making small changes to demonstrate we could be effective and using less electricity in putting less stuff in the garbage stream.

And it started to spider.

It led to us learning about native plants for landscaping and composting.

And it changed the way our board started to think about policies.

So it became a major priority of our board as an outcrop of the d devotion.

I think having a common goal, even if just one simple goal to reduce your energy consumption in the organization can be a nice way to get people to work on a common goal and see those wins early on.

>> That is super helpful.

Super helpful.

Yeah, I can't tell you how many webinars we do on any topic it involves a certain amount of advocacy internally.

So those skills are really important to have to make the case for this work at your location, for sure.

Well, we are at the top of the horde.

What an exciting kick off to our series.

I'm so excited that you've provided this overview of the journey we will be taking and the work we will be doing.

I have posted a link to that sort of series landing page.

A reminder you can register for the rest of the series and we will keep informing you about those as they come through until the end of the year.

A reminder that I will send an you an e-mail later today once the recording is posted.

You don't need to request a certificate.

I automatically send a certificate for everyone that attended this session today.

But a reminder the recording will be available in the WebJunction course catalog where if folks do need certificates, they can obtain one there for viewing the recording.

I'm also going to send you to a short survey that provides you as feedback.

We will be using that feedback as we move through the series.

Feel free to chime in there with any specifics for this session.

But we also ask you about other learning you are interested in.

And we will share that with Rebekkah, as well.

Thank you so much, Rebekkah.

I'm looking forward to all the great work that you are bringing to this community and we look forward to the next session in August.

Everyone have a great rest of your week.

And be sustainable.

Thank you so much.

>> REBEKKAH: Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, Jennifer.