>> Jennifer Let me go ahead and get started. For this session as well as our other webinars, we create a learner guide for you to extend your learning on the topic. It's a great way to bring the conversation to your team. The guide is customizable, you can make it work for you if you have specific areas you'd like to dive into deeper. It's yours to make work for your efforts. And we love the idea of you taking this work and extending it with others at your organization. We're thrilled to have been able to continue working with the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, we're so excited to be in our fifth webinar of the series. We have one more session that we will be hosting in December and more articles that are coming, so this is a great landing page to remember for accessing all of those recordings and our resources. I'm thrilled to invite Rebekka Smith Aldrich again back to the series. She's the executive director at the mid-hudson library system New York. She also the cofounder and current president of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative author of many, many books. I'm going to pass it on over and have Rebekka introduce our three additional panelists for today. Welcome to all of you. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Jennifer, thank you so much for all of your support during this series, and for the warm welcome you always give us to start off these webinars. I would just like to say thank you to everyone on the webinar here today. This is a long series, but it's number five and it's way more fun than the other ones we've done. So I promise you that here for the next hour. Because you're not just going to listen to me drone on about how dire things are, you're going to hear from practitioners that are figuring things out, trying things out in the field, who are here to share with you their expertise, key things they've learned that might be helpful to you, and great suggestions and leads for where you can get more ideas for both implementing programming and ideas for content for programs as well. I am going to take some time to introduce our panelists in a few minutes. But first I'm going to see if I can get control of the screen so I can advance some slides. And then I'll be able to introduce the topic here for you, because part of what we're so excited about and want to really thank WebJunction and OCLC for their partnership in is that we feel the series is really helping to create a common vocabulary across the profession. The issue of climate change, sustainability, climate action, these are all words we throw around, but if we could all be focused and talking the same language when it comes to this work, we think that's going to help build a much larger community of practice, sharing of ideas, and hopefully accelerating work on the topic of climate action, which is the real goal of this series. So again, thank you so much for being here, but thank you also to WebJunction and OCLC for their leadership and partnering with the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, which is as our cofounder said yesterday in a meeting with someone from OCLC, a ragtag band of rebels that's just trying to accelerate the work and help the library profession do good work on behalf of our communities to create stronger community resilience in the face of what is coming and what is already here. For those of you that have not been with us throughout the entire series, here is the doom and gloom part. We are experiencing climate change in ways that are really dire. When it comes to human health, wellness, and safety, we're seeing records being broken every single year, from records r record-setting heat waves, record-setting temperatures, record-setting flooding, more severe and frequent weather and severe storms that we're contending with, wildfires are becoming scarier and scarier in different parts of our country. There's a lot to be concerned about, and this is the outcome of many years of making poor decisions when it comes to our economy, how we treat people, and how we treat this planet. So as we think about how do we maybe not even turn this thing around, but just find ways to thrive in the face of what's happening here, that's the whole goal of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, is empowering folks that work in libraries to own what comes next. And to figure out how both to use our role's educators, but also as community catalysts to help bring people together to find solutions in the face of what we're contending with. So many of you are aware the American library shoarks is doing strong work on this topic, and one of our panelists is a big reason why that is. Mandi Goodsett is the current coordinator of the sustainable round table on ALA, and I've done my time on that group, as well as the council committee on sustainability. But this brief, this call to action that was issued back in 2022 tried to set the tone here, which is one of urgency that we are no longer kind of analyzing what could happen and what ifs, we're really looking at the reality of climate change, and watching other industries issue call to actions from the medical community, to the international policy making committee of the United Nations, screaming from the rooftops, please do something! Here we are, let's get organized! We just saw the fifth national climate assessment come out, and you can see also beams of hope coming out because people are starting to get organized, and the library profession needs to as well. So this call to action and really that reminder that climate change is the generation's grandest challenge. We have got to organize around it, and find ways to not only be authentic in how we do things at our libraries, but help our communities come together on this topic as well. So at the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, if you're not familiar with us, hop on our website and learn more about us. But we are a really dedicated group of volunteers that have been finding like-minded people for the past eight years to do good work on climate action and being more sustainable as libraries and contribute to community resilience. We've identified really four major characteristics of libraries that are sustainable. And you're going to see this come to life in the conversation today with our panel. We have to be authentic, ourselves. We have to walk the talk. And that's why we pick this title for the program today. We have to do good work from the inside out in order to be good partners in our communities and on our campuses and our schools. So we're going to take a little deeper look today at what that looks like, but there's also these three Hallmark areas that we're doing work in. Being catalysts for social cohesion and civic participation, you're going to hear a lot about that in the final entry in the series here for WebJunction. But you're also going to see hints of it here today. And deliberate action on climate change mitigation and adaptation, which is why we spent so much time talking about those topics already in the series. So all of this can coalesce and come together in a variety of different ways in your libraries. But understanding that we have to live our values out loud means we have to have values. To hopefully your organization has values, maybe you've adopted them visibly and you can see them, perhaps in your plan of service or on the about page on the library's website, the American Library Association has been doing very good work for honestly the whole life of ALA to help the profession define its values. So that we are clear in speaking about them and defending them and fighting for them. We're all super aware right now of the fights around intellectual freedom E. and the fight of the generation here is going to be sustainability and thinking about climate change. So maybe your core values look like the list from ALA, maybe it looks a little different, or you've got further on these topics, but that is step one. Does your organization state their values? So you can design to them, live them out loud? Hopefully you as a professional working in a library has your own set of code. You've got your code of what's really important to you as a professional, that's why these are the core values of the profession. Because we can own those, even if our institution hasn't articulated them yet. But living them out loud, what does that mean, what does it look like? It can take many different forms, as I said, it could be reflected in your mission, vision, value statements, hopefully it's coming through in policies and procedures that guide the work in your library and govern your library. But also really being evident in our plans of service. Not just talking about what we're going to do, but why we're Gebre Gebremariam to do it. And then actually reflecting that in purposeful design of programs, collections, and the partnerships we seek out to carry out our mission and our vision for our institution. And this can just bleed into everything we do. Down to facility operations and what office supplies we buy, and where does our energy come from, and how do we talk about what we do at libraries? We always say a lot of times it's not about doing different things, but talking about what we do in different ways. But the group we've got here today is going to be talking about one little slice of this, which is programs. Because we think that's a really fun way actually to pull the thread through and show you how every little decision we making tell the story of how we live our values out loud. Programs, that's a broad topic, to some degree it has three major components to it, you design programs, you actually carry out the programs, implementing them so people can learn from them, the people that you have speaking or whatever design you've come up with, and then you've got to evaluate those programs. Everyone's least favorite part of the cycle of programs, right? Understanding, did we actually make a difference in what we chose to do here? And as we start to see the triple bottom line thinking throughout each of these phases of program design, I think it starts to come together, and that's what our panelists are going to be talking about here today. Why do we do programs? It's part of our educational opportunity to connect with more people, and help them understand the wider world around us, and access information that helps to improve their quality of life. And are we aligning those opportunities with core values, with strategic goals, and with desired outcomes, that is something all administrators hope are happening, because it makes talking to our funders much easier, but it means we fulfilled our mission. Then there's also walking the talk, not just talking about climate change and the importance of resilience, and oh, my goodness, we should be doing the right thing, but did we actually do the right thing as we carried out those programs? This was an idea that was borne out of a conversation I had almost a decade ago with our cofounder of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, Matthew V dts ollerman, who was talking about the food that gets served at the programs in his library. He was staying my staff put out rice crispy treats and candy for the kids, but what does that say about our values? They put fresh fruits out, and kids picked apples more often than the treats. But it was the little choice that reflected the values of the organization. We care about you, we care about your health and we're representing that in the choices we make at the smallest level of the services that we provide. And then evaluating the outcomes of what you've p produced. This is something we've had practice in, we get asked to do it, we often get frustrated because we wonder can we truly measure the impact of some of the things we do? But there's new and wonderful tools that help us do this work. From collecting anecdotal information from folks who come to our programs, from using things like the new project outcome tools from the public library association, which has tools for public libraries and academic libraries that are now actually aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development goals. Earlier this spring they made this announcement that you can now align not only getting your outcome-based evaluation done on your programs, but also seeing, hey, how does that map to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals? Can you report on that as well? 15 your institution doesn't, the library can be the leader in talking about those connections and why that matters. So those three areas of work are what we're going to dive a little deeper into with our expert panelists that have joined us here today, which I'm thrilled to introduce to you. Particularly because I feel you need a big break from me in this series, and these are some fun people to talk to. So this is where we're going to spend the bulk of our time today, speaking with Mandi, Evan, and hazel. I'm going to give them' chance to introduce themselves, they'll do a better job than I will. I want to tell you why I invited them on to this panel. Mandi I've known for a very long time with the American Library Association but she and Evian with stepped up to write a chapter in the book, Libraries and Sustainability, the latest book on sustainability from ALA Editions, all about sustainable event planning. Literally step by step, how to walk the talk when you are planning your programs. And that's what they're going to share about here today. But you can take a deeper dive on that topic through that book, which is freely available through OCLC. I'm not here to shill and sell the book. But it's a really good book, I'll say that. There's many good chapters in it, not just Mandi's and Evan's. Hazel is a part of the Curtis Memorial Library who you've heard me talk about, they're the first library in the state of Maine to be certified under the Sustainable Library Certification Program. We were so impressed, I built in a side trip to this library on my summer vacation this year. I dragged my husband and my friends to this library to see them in person and learn more about what they're doing, because they're so impressive in walking the talk. And you're going to hear more about that from Hazel and what they do and how they do it and how you can replicate some of the thinking that Hazel has been a trailblazer on in this area. But I want to give each of these folks a chance to introduce themselves and say hi before we dive into our moderated Q and A and you folks are going to have a chance to learn from them and ask them questions directly as well. So Mandi, if you don't mind, I'll give you the floor here to introduce yourself and tell them a little bit about why you even care about sustainability. >> MANDI GOODSETT: Sure. Thanks, Rebekka. And hello, everyone. It's so nice to see such a huge crowd here. So yes, my name is Mandi Goodsett, and I'm a librarian at Cleveland State University in Net zero Ohio. And I kind of became personally interested in sustainability because I -- it is an enormous climate change -- climate change is such an enormous problem, and I just felt really compelled to do something about it. So I started by getting involved in the ALA Sustainability Round Table, and I just started kind of, as a volunteer on a committee, and I got really excited about what I was seeing, and I became a committee chair. And then now as Rebekka said, I'm involved on the steering committee as the coordinator this year, because I think being involved with other libraries on such mean example fell work is just really inspiring, and it can be a great way to combat anxiety about climate change, is to actually take some action. So -- and then I've also kind of been involved at my own library in setting up our little sustainability team and doing things at a more local level. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Thank you. Next I'm going to ask Hazel to introduce herself. >> HAZEL ONSRUD: Thanks, Rebekka. Well, once upon a time a long time ago, I grew up in a little town in Maine that had a small library, and so I learned to appreciate a lot of different libraries thanks to my great parents who took us to the neighboring towns when I read all those books. But I actually found sustainability before I found library science as a profession. And so I got obsessed with, gosh darn it, there's a lot of problems in the world, and -- but then was delighted to find out we actually have the solutions we need to solve most of these problems. Where, you know, we can create this better world together. Once you open up the room to let the voices in and the -- get all the right people in and diversity of humans and viewpoints and ideas, we can make this better world. Where to be fair, better is a highly subjective term. So then when I moved back to Maine, I thought, gosh, where is this magical place? Yeah, classrooms are a pretty good option, that's what I had been thinking about before, this magical place where you can get all these people together. But guess what? All of you know where that magical place is. It's a publish! And so I -- it's a public library! So I was delighted to join the team here at Curtis Memorial Library, which is the public library in Brunswick, Maine, over seven years ago now. And here I get to focus on community programming and as well as how that works with our library of things. And we were, as Rebekka said, thanks to our director who just went ahead and led the way, got to be involved in the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, which took us to the next level. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Thanks so much, Hazel. Evian? >> EVAN MESZAROS: Hey, everybody, thanks again, Rebekka, and to WebJunction and OCLC for putting this series on. It's been really illuminating. I'm an academic librarian at a mid-sized research University, case western research University in Ohio, I work with students and faculty from the natural sciences and mathematics and manage the collections for those same populations. And I also support the interdisciplinary environmental studies program at the institution, and this is meant coordinating with all the other subject librarians that are relevant to environmental studies,out side of environmental science. So everything from engineering, and law, to ethics and social sciences, business, and so forth. To I get to work in this area sort of, at least some of the time. Overall, I'm drawn to these topics as an environmental -- a lifelong environmentallities, I minored in environmental studies in college, been involved in a number of groups outside of librarianship, climate reality projects, citizens' climate lobby, a few others. And specifically with respect to where my environmentalism intersects with my library career, I've been involved in sustainability efforts at the national and state levels, specifically through the ALAs Sustainability Round Table at the national level. And in cofounding with Mandi, actually, the Sustainability Interest Group in our state's ACLA chapter. Also here in Ohio. And I've been involved in efforts in sustainability at my university, so kind of outside of the library, for instance I was involved in our climate action plan and contributed -- contribute to its ongoing climate action network. But for a variety of reasons, and I can say more about this later on, maybe it's been challenging for me to get traction on sustainability E. especially sustainability efforts within my own library. This is going to be the next frontier for me, is the way I've been looking at it. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: I want to thank you for helping us get started with the first question. Something that's been coming up in all of the entries in this series are folks finding their way to these webinars because they're looking for help to -- they see the need, they understand it, but how do you build the buy-in in your institution to have programs that walk the talk and foe kiss on the topics that you think are going to make a difference in your community or on your campus? So we're going to transition here to a Q and A portion of the event. I'm going to be asking the questions, Mandi, Hazel and Evian are going to be answering the questions, but I want to start at the beginning. A lot of people have the question, how do you build buy-in among your coworkers and the administration of your libraries to do good work in this area in the way you think is the right way to do it. Mandi, would you mind if I start with you on this one? >> MANDI GOODSETT: Sure. I think that's a really tricky thing to accomplish. So what has worked for me is finding connections to things that people care about. So sustainability is a really big topic, there are lots of things that might resonate with people. Maybe they're passionate about food, or they want to geek out about electric vehicles, or -- there's just so many things that might strike a chord with folks. If you can find out what that is, I think that is a great way in. So as an example, at my library we have, as I said, a little sustainability team, just folks who volunteer to get together and work on sustainability-related project. But we had a lot of burnout during and after COVID, the COVID pandemic, so people were kind of dropping out of the team and saying, I'm sorry, I don't have the bandwidth for this. And somebody suggested, why don't we have a sustainability swap in our library? Just among our staff, where people can bring stuff they don't want, things from their home, cooking supplies, or, you know, office supplies, whatever. And other people can just take it if they wane it. And so we -- want it. We started the sustainability swap project and now we're planning I think our fourth one. It just got people really energized. And we had a number of people who really liked doing that, they liked getting -- shopping around for people -- among people's things. And it kind of was a catalyst to get the group going again. So I think that would be my advice. My other piece of advice would be to really think about building social capital. I think if people work with you and they have a positive experience, and you show that you can get those small wins or kind of accomplish the goals that you set up for yourself, they're more likely to sign on to what you're trying to promote. So if you can build those good relationships, it doesn't have to be about sustainability, it just kind of -- kind of that social capital that reputation for getting things done I think it really can help you when you approach others with these ideas. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Thanks, Mandi. Hazel. >>> How did you build buy? You mentioned your director already being forward-thinking about things, but tell us about your journey about building buy-in across your institution. >> HAZEL ONSRUD: I'm going to echo Mandi with slightly different words, which is I think meeting people where they're at. Whether you're talking about programming or other staff members. So recognizing that oh, maybe this matters to them. If crafts matters, great. Don't critique what they're doing, instead, offer them an alternative. And then because alternative solutions can often be win-wins for everyone. Maybe using scraps, for example, for crafting, is a great way to save programming money that your other coworkers might be into. But it's also good for the environment. If you get challenged, why go the extra effort, there's actually -- there's a couple of links I'll put into the chat of favorite resources I had that I would just send folks E. well, you know I'm geeky about this, this is why I care. And there's plenty of those resources out there that you can draw on, but you don't very to hit them over the head with it. It's about sustainability! Climate change! Doom and gloom! All the time. And on that note, I would say the last thing I refer to a lot, there's a lot more resources on this, but there's a book called the Righteous Mind by Jonathan Hyatt, for me it remind me of oh, wait, frame that, frame your argument for more folks who care about traditional values and things. When I'm talking about crafts, maybe if I talk about traditional uses, supporting traditional crafts makers, things like that, rather than saying, well, it's good for the earth, not to go get this excess plastic that's going to be microplastics. Which are really two very different approaches. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Cool. Excellent. Thank you. Evian, you said this is your upcoming goal, right? Building more buy-in across your institution. Talk to us about what's working, what you think will work in the future for you. >> EVAN MESZAROS: Right. Thank you. So -- I should say up front that I definitely feel like somewhat of an imposter being on this panel with Mandi and Hazel. Of course you yourself, Rebekka, because you've all taken, you can correct me if this is a mischaracterization, taken did not a bottom-up, maybe more of a holistic approach to advancing sustainability at your respective libraries and in the profession overall. In my case, as I suggested earlier, it's been more of a top-down or outward-in sort of approach, do everything but at the library sort of approach. And that's for a variety of reasons, I wonder if others in the audience might resonate with this, I've -- I feel like it can be a possibly unreceptive culture in my library that I might be dealing with in a previous webinar in this series, I know Rebekka described I think shouting to the wind as the lone voice at her library, and that's -- that really hit the nail on the head in terms of how I feel like I've been feeling for the last few years at my library. And don't get me wrong, there's definitely coworkers at my library who agree with me about making various aspects of our operations, collections, event planning, stuff like that, more sustainable, but to date these interests are kind of scattered and deprioritized and I continue grumming while there are very little changes. And I was thinking about it, there could be things that other libraries, I know certainly being in an academic library embedded in a university, there's -- thinking of the org chart, there's a steep hierarchy at my library, and there's things tend not to happen unless upper leadership has clear guidance in place and clear goals. So it would be great if we had sustainability written into the university's strategic plan, that's a little above my reach at the moment, I think to change, but that's something that I think would really maybe allow the library to move forward in that were in place. For folks in academic libraries in general, I've also observed, and everybody will agree with me in those institutions that siloing -- silos tend to really keep helpful actions from spreading. We have a sustainability office on our campus, but there's really not enough staffing to do anything except really student-related campaigns. And we librarians as staff are really -- we're really not on their radar in terms of partnering on things. So library staff are left to talk with other staff in other offices across university about how we might pool extra office supplies to somewhere on campus, instead of just throwing them out, or finding a better vendor to work with on waste or something like that. At any rate, it's for these reasons that I've personally put most of my own energy into advancing sustainability at the national and state levels, including cowriting this chapter, which for my part came from a place of having to research and not really the actual experience, and that's really a lot more what Mandi injected in the chapter, and I was grateful for that. My hope, my intention is that by the time I am able to start making real systemic progress at my library, which hopefully will be soon, I'll have the bona fides to back up my suggestions and not just continue being the lone grumpy idealist ruining everyone's party by complaining about balloons and vinyl tablecloths and such. And luckily I will say that I've recently gotten the green light from my library leadership to explore starting a sustainability committee at my library. And so, yeah, it's -- building buy-in from coworkers might be in the near future if I can start pulling the threads together. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Thank you, Evian with, thank you for your candor about where you are in the journey for yourself and your institution. I think a lot of people can relate what you're up against and thinking about, and strategizing for moving forward. I think it's super valid, and I want to thank you for that. Because I think part of what we have to talk about here is how do we make conversations and suggestions around this topic positive, rather than judgmental. Which can come from our own anxiety around the topic. So this is my next question. Particularly for Mandi and Hazel, how have you worked to not only build that buy-in, but to do so in ways for perhaps the folks attending your programs, to make it positive rather than judgmental or worrisome. Mandi, do you want to start? I know you've got a great story about your book discussion group. >> MANDI GOODSETT: Yes. Our Friends of the Library group has a monthly book discussion, and I convinced them to use the book Braiding SweetGrass one month, which I highly recommend. Because it's not a book discussion normally about sustainability, there are a lot of people who attended who don't normally I think think about that topic very deeply. And so one of our staff members, we had an interesting discussion because she admitted that she didn't realize that gas stoves are kind of not only bad for the environment, they're not very good for your health, either. And she was like a big proponent of it, of them, until she learned that. And she said she kind of felt guilty about it, and was kind of embarrassed. And so it was like a good opportunity to reassure her that it's okay -- you don't know what you don't know. And I think that is really important for discussions about sustainability. Oh, the book is called Braiding Sweetgrass. But, yeah, I think it's important to emphasize to people we're at learning, we can't know all the best things to do, and we can't always do the things that we learn are the best things to do. So it shouldn't be an atmosphere of shaming or anything like that. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: I know you're going to put that book in the chat for folks. A lot of people have heard of it, but some haven't. That will be awesome. Hazel. >>> I know you've got good talking points on this as well. Can you you tackle this one about how to be more positive than judgmental? >> HAZEL ONSRUD: Well, we fake it until we can, right? No. I think there's a lot to be positive about. And one of the things, if you start looking at local needs, there's a lot of them. I hope you don't very as many as I do. But basically we got a lot of local needs. If you need inspiration on some of the challenges, I put a couple links into chat. I've also put a couple links into things about solutions. Because those can be inspiration too. And I think the formula I've used for running programs here, and I cans royal I here, have run hundreds and hundreds of them because I'm often not the one talking beyond the intro. What we do is we find a local problem, and then we take that problem and we find a community group who is working on it. Or sometimes it's just an interested human who is working on that problem and has ideas about it. Then we provide some resources, sometimes that's a space, sometimes that's tools, sometimes that's book to help them. And something along those lines. And then together, we take those -- the community folks and myself, and the tools, we make sure that we're coming up with a sustainability solution that something -- looking at that through a sustainability lens. How can we help solve this problem, and make it an appropriate solution? And that has been incredibly successful. Because not only do you solve a problem that everyone locally cares about, you do it in a globally relevant way, and then anything you buy, whether it be a book or resource, or whatever it is, a mushroom log tool loaning set, oh, yes. It goes out all the time. You have done this creative solution you have buy-in for. So it turns people who might have been oh, I don't like that, to -- into proponents of whatever solution it is that you are advocating for. And I think we also strategically chose topics like food, not everyone cares about food. But a lot of people care about food. A lot of people on the whole political spectrum. Whatever spectrum you want. Haves, have nots, different cultures. A lot of people care about food. That's one example. And it's also directly related in many facets, in many ways to our sustainable development goals. I'll stop there for now. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Okay. I'd like to do a little departure and give Mandi and Evian a chance to highlight some of the key things they've researched and learned and put together for you here today on sustainable event planning. Especially carrying out the programs themselves, some of the info from the chapter that they wrote on the topic, that we thought people would benefit from here today. Many -- you might have thought of these things, but maybe not all of them. I'm going to turn it over to Mandi and Evian. >> MANDI GOODSETT: We thought it might be easier to see them in slide form. This is -- these are a few ideas for practical activities, actions that you can take when you're planning programs and Hazel has some great subject matter for the programs. So the first thing we thought would be important to mention is how important it is to establish a formal commitment, if you can, to sustainability as a library organization. And Rebekka talked about this already, it's just easier if you have a policy or some sort of value statement that you can point to and say, you know, we -- it's worth it to us to spend a little bit more on compostable Dinnerware instead of the plastic stuff, or even though it's kind of unusual, we're not going to buy a plastic water bottle for all of our speakers. We're going to have a pitcher of water, whatever it might be. We can say, we're doing that because it's our policy. Or because we have made a commitment to sustainability. And it's just a little easier. In terms of actually marketing your event, try to avoid waste. If you find printing a lot of things doesn't actually get you a lot of traction in terms of attendance, don't print a lot of things. And then communicate with your potential attendees, with vendors about the fact that you're trying to make your event more sustainable. And hopefully you can point to that policy or value statement that your library has. If you've had previous events and you've had success with sustainability, communicate that. Our last event was 70% waste-free, or whatever. Zero waste. Whatever it might be. Really toot your own horn and let people know that you've had success with sustainability, because that can breed even more success, I think. >> EVAN MESZAROS: First step in considering the impacts of travel, as another category, thinking about -- I guess we were thinking especially about regional or statewide conferences, is considering whether the event you might be putting on really needs to be in person in the first place. One of the largest components of an in-person event is carbon footprint is attributable to travel to and from the event. So switching to virtual or hybrid can really shrink that footprint. And also the more we hold certain events like talks or business meetings, for instance, virtually, the more acceptable doing this will become in time. And as a bonus, virtual events are in many ways more inclusive as they can be more accessible to those who can't physically travel to an in-person event, as well as those ho are unable to afford to travel to an event. And we're thinking largely about regional conferences and things like that. Another piece of advice is to encourage attendees of your in-person library events, to use public transit or carpooling to get to and from the event in order to minimize emissions that might otherwise result from everyone individually taking their own vehicles. And of course walking or biking has an even smaller footprint than carpooling or public transit. Helping your attendees navigate to or around your venue using those modes of transportation can be even better. Lastly, whatever you may think of the concept of carbon offsets, your library or library organization should at least consider offering them for both attendees as well as speakers. As you would like an honorary yum for a speaker. For those who especially have to travel greater distances in order to attend your event. So, for example, ALA is working with native, I was looking it up, a certified B corporation and they're going to be providing the carbon offset option for attendees at the upcoming event. But the landscape of carbon offsets seems to be changing, and so I'd urge you to keep up your research on these as well in terms of which offset you're offering. Since this is unfortunately a landscape riddled with green washing, and you'll see news items about that all the time. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: R. >> MANDI GOODSETT: When it comes to the food that you provide at your events, if you can, try to include vegetarian, vegan, and plant-based options, organic, certified fair trade food, and beverages. If you can also try to choose locally sourced food options that food has fewer food miles and also can support the local economy, which is great. Try to avoid food waste, that is a -- that could be I feel like one of the easier things to accomplish. It could be a little harder with some of these other things, but thinking about food waste is really important, it's a big contributor to climate change. So just try to order a reasonable amount of food, I think our impulse, maybe it's an American thing, to order tons and tons of food. And then have a plan for leftovers. Because inevitably you'll probably have some leftovers, so maybe you offer your attendees take-out containers they can use, or you let your other colleagues know in the library, hey, we had an event and there's leftover food, come on over and help us eat it down, all the leftovers. Make your waste streams really clear, so if you have come posting, which is awesome if you can -- composting, which is awesome if you can do that, it can be confusing to people what that is. I know when we've offered it in our library, people were like, is this the same as recycling? What can I put in here? So just be clear about what that is. And in general, let people know, even if you just have recycling, let people know, hey, we have recycling, have a nice sign or whatever. If you can do composting, or even if you can't, try to use compostable dinnerware, because even if you're just throwing it into the garbage, the materials that were used to make it are a little more ethical than plastic. Next slide. >> EVAN MESZAROS: In terms of swag and giveaways, swag is fun. And of course it's been a part of the conference and event landscape for a long time. And I'll personally admit there's something about that little dopamine hit in the part of my brain where you're given a gift, and that makes engaging with vendors more enjoyable. But having said thea, so much of the swag we see at conferences or even the stuff that we hand out at libraries on a day-to-day basis tends to be intended for single-use, made of plastic, generally destined for the landfill after a short life. And you probably have a good idea of what I'm talking about here. Branded pens, lip balm, USB sticks, overly packaged food items. Plastic bags, toys, those kinds of things. Year after year after seeing this stuff at conferences and being given this stuff by vendors to hand out to our patrons at our own library events, this kind of led a number of us in the ALA sustainability round table's public advocacy and awareness committee to address this and a few years back Mandi and I codeveloped the Sustainable Swag Guide. There's one for library workers, intended for library workers, and another one for library vendors that you can give to the vendor that may be sending a lot of swag that is not the most sustainable. And it details kind of exactly what the problem is with traditional swag, along with suggestions for alternatives. If you determine swag is even necessary in the first place, which maybe it's not. But some of those alternatives include virtual gift cards, you don't have to have anything physical at all. Food or consumable items with minimal or no packaging. Metal water bottles, recycled cotton totes and clothing, librarians love totes, even though we're swimming in them a lot of time, but it's always a good option. A more recent one I saw this year was a branded deck of playing cards. Which I thought was a clever, just a stack of paper. We encourage you to check the guide out, and if you have further suggestions, I know we definitely would be open to adding to the list since we want to make this a living guide that is useful to everybody. So please don't hesitate to reach out to us or there's also an email contact to ALA sustainability -- Sustainability Round Table on the guide itself you can send suggestions to. >> HAZEL ONSRUD: And folks have some great ideas in the chat, too. Giving experiences like -- >> MANDI GOODSETT: Giving experiences like museum memberships, that's a great idea too. So we put together -- this was just a very -- we dipped our toe in just a little bit into some ideas for sustainable event planning. But we wanted to give you some more detailed tips. So we put together this guide for you all, and the link is in the chat. And this is another one, if you have suggestions for things to add or change, I already am inspired by your comments in the chat, please don't hesitate to let us know. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Thank you so much for that quick overview of event planning and all the great tips that you've learned along the way and gathered for folks, and again, I hope everyone clicks on the link in the chat to the guide that Mandi and Evian put together. It's a nice gift to you from them to help you maybe accelerate some of your thinking in this area. I'm going to hop back to Hazel, because Hazel has done something I think phenomenal, seriously the Library of Things at the Curtis Memorial Library is the best I've seen. It's so thoughtful. Good thinking in terms of how that integrates with your collection, and programming. So Hazel, can you talk about the guiding principles behind the cure ration of that collection and how it relates to your programs? >> HAZEL ONSRUD: Yeah, sure. So this is one of the things -- one of many things our library does, it's a bit odd, but we think it's cool is and I'm so glad you do too, Rebekka! So I might be the one talking here, but I want to let you know they would have never let me out of the network closet, which is where our Library of Things began. So you can start very, very small. If you take a look at our website, you'll now see we have hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of items. Indeed, today I just finished collecting some resources given to us by goodwill of Northern New England. And what is the Library of Things? For those of you who don't know, many libraries probably you know lend items beyond books. We discovered that as we were thinking about doing some of these programs to meet local needs, there is really a lack of items to help people meet those needs. You can't go and rent even if you wanted to, you can't go and rent a spinning wheel. And you can't -- at least not in our area. I'm sure you can in some areas. You can't rent a mushroom -- a mushroom log Kitt which helps you put mushroom spawn into logs and you have shitakes and oyster mushrooms that will bloom for at least five years. That's local food that's really great. Things like that. So we started from that perspective, and that's actually how our initial library of things grew. We got a lot of craft things at first, because we were doing a lot of craft programming. But we didn't necessarily have the rug-making tools and things to do the scrap craft class. So we got those items, we were looking back at these traditional skills, and saying, this will meet the crafty need of our community, and we'll get to try out something new, and -- but also then we'll have these things that they can borrow and lend, honestly how many rugs are you going to make some some people might make a lot rnght that's great. If so, more power to you. But a lot of these things you might want to try once and decide you don't like it. We did this with a series of classes, and that's what we continue to do. But as you can see, it became so popular that it grew from there. And I'll put a link to the chat about our Library of Things, but it's tied to that concept that for every local problem, if you use a sustainability lens and you get together, you put on a program, and you get resources, and you get community stakeholders together, you can create the sustainable solution that then you can replicate over and over and over again, or make better. And so the sustainable development goals were really a key -- when we were looking at this, you'll notice there's a lot of secret stuff in here mplet you may not know, like there are no gas-powered tools that. Was a pumpful decision. Yeah -- purposeful decision. Yeah, there are no tilling tools because we were doing a low -- a lot of our programming was centered around no-till agriculture. And changing -- we also have no lawn mowers because we were working on changing lawns into dpards. I'm not telling you we'll never have a lawn mower, okay? There's probably a space for that. But just items we were purchasing, which is different than the items that are donated, were specifically associated with the sustainable solutions. Even though half the people didn't know that's what they were for. They just thought oh, the library's gotten cool! I didn't even know it! >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Hazel, authentic so much. That's so much fun, and I can see people are discovering your list of Library of Things through your website and I see lots of oohs and aahs in the chat. You're spreading a lot of ideas just through that list. We've got a few more minutes for me to ask you questions and we're going to turn it over to ask questions that have come no through chat. I'd like to ask you, along the way, have you -- you've got more experience under your belt than many people on this topic. Are there things you've recognized along the way and adjusted for? Mandi, do you want to start on that one? >> MANDI GOODSETT: Yeah request, sure. I think one thing I've found is that if you're having a program and the topic is related to sustainability, depending on how you frame it, it can be kind of heavy, and it can cause some anxiety for folks. So just being aware, kind of like we were talking before, like some people feel theat guilt about it, and other people are just worried, and afraid. So being aware of that and being sensitive I think is important. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Hazel, how about you? Anything you've adjusted for along the way? >> HAZEL ONSRUD: I think more appropriate thing is what haven't we adjusted for. It's constant iteration. But I think one thing that really helped us is when we were being this weird library, we actually -- instead of calling things community needs, we started talking about missing literacies. So I'm sure some of you have recognized that libraries support literacy, right? Also traditionally libraries are supporting digital literacy. Or financial literacy. Well, what about also like, cultural literacy? Or growing literacy? Or food literacy? There's just so many missing literacies, that are really, really important to functioning in our modern societies that aren't being met. And the we're seeing that at the library and at the help desk. So I think that really was one way we kind of adjusted along the way, that really helped us. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: I saw a question come up earlier that you tackled in chat, maybe you could verbalize it for folks who missed it. How are you identifying those literacies that your community may have a need for? >> MANDI GOODSETT: That's a great question. There are a lot of different ways, and I think actually get to that -- >> HAZEL ONSRUD: I get to that in some of the library of things, how did you choose those items? And things like that. I go into depth on that analysis portion. But there are a bunch of websites, even as something as simple as the Census, you can look at and be like, wow, I didn't know this information about our community. But also, honestly, if you go to your local government agencies or your local nonprofits, anyone who is working on something, they're going to be able to just, you don't even have to do the research. They'll be able to tell you the stats immediately. And with back, obviously, it's cited, backed up, all for good information here. But there's other reference things like, I mentioned healthy communities is one, and pointed to that. There's also, I really liked Goodwill, Northern New England has a lovely sustainability calculator that made me think about some things I might not have been thinking about before. Such as substance use, and all sorts of things as part of that larger spectrum. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Thanks, Hazel. I'm going to ask the panel to share any parting thoughts or best practices. We didn't get a chance to touch on yet, and we'll switch to questions from the audience. Who would like to go first? Don't make me call on you. >> MANDI GOODSETT: I have a quick, I'm -- I just want to give a shout out to the ALA Diseability Round Table as a place to get ideas and also the support that you might not have in your local environment. So, yeah, check it out. If you're an ALA member it's not too much more to add stainer tea to your membership, and a really quick plug, it's turning 10 this year, so we're having a birthday party on December 4th. So you can register there if you're interested. There will be prizes, and you do not have to be a member of Sustain RT to attend. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: I was on board in year one, and now you're on it years later. Thank you. >> HAZEL ONSRUD: I have to do the shout outs as well. Because I think three sources that I would say, if you are looking at programming that you want to do, but also more importantly, programming you've done that we need to learn from you, right? We know you have a ton. There are a few different places that you could submit those. One, and probably where I've probably submitted most of mine, is the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, if You're a Member There's Some Great Available Resources, but They Also Have a Ton of Programming That I Plan on Copying. Also there is the programming librarian.org, which is great, it's not all sustainability oriented, so just be aware there's more vinyl and stuff there. But still, good things, and there's alternatives, really good stuff. And then there is also the library map at IFLA. They have some really great -- you can look around the world and see a number of programming ideas that have occurred in different countries and things like that. All in English, too, which is great. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Evan, any parting thoughts or best practices you wanted to slip in before the end? >> EVAN MESZAROS: I'll echo Hayes El, the Sustainable Libraries Initiative has tons of great resources for getting started, I'm saying that as someone who is intending to get started at my own library soon. But plugging in also to your state and national Sustain RT, and even at the IFLA level, I'm glad you mentioned that, there's Environmental Sustainability and Library -- I can't remember what it stand for, but there's a national -- international level of sustainability and libraries, an organization for that. So checking out the resources and all those groups couldn't hurt. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Thank you, folks. All right. JP, I'm going to ask for help to see what I might have missed in the chat. Questions we could help tackle before the event of our event. >> JENNIFER PETERSON: You all did a great job of covering them. Hazel, did you answer the question about the most checked-out items from your library of things? >> HAZEL ONSRUD: I didn't, because it actually depends on how you measure those metrics. I geek out about that! And many other things, and to tell you exactly how to do it and exactly how to convince your administration to let you do it, and a whole bunch of presentations of me babbling on at the bottom of that page. So it really depends, and what works for some person shouldn't necessarily work for us. And just to be clear, I helped cofound a tool library, the main tool library, before I came to the Public Library, so just as an example, I've personal experience with those two things, which are quite different. So you of course will be very different as well. >> JENNIFER PETERSON: Excellent. I also posted to chat the WebJunction has done a webinar on the Library of Things and has collected other resources, so I'm going to add Hazel's instructions on there too. Let's -- go ahead. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: The other spot to go to for ideas on the topic of programming and library of things, on the Sustainable Libraries Initiative web page, if you go to the members link, you can see the final presentations of libraries who have finished their certifications. That is a gold mine of ideas. On all topics. But you will also get ideas for programs, Library of Things, partnerships that might be inspiring to you. >> JENNIFER PETERSON: Absolutely. The only other question that I saw was around shall, that their library is concerned about using only serving -- only individual serving packaged items for food, any thoughts from the panel on how to approach food packaging? >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: I love the specificity of the question. I'm going to give a top-level answer and let everyone else chime in. Folks, we're looking for progress, not perfection. Human health is an important thing. That's why we use the triple bottom line, because it can't just be about environmental sound choices, but social, equitable choices where we're proa equity thing people from germs, perhaps. Do you have any tips on the single-packaged food, or bulk buying of food and keeping people safe when we're going in that direction? >> HAZEL ONSRUD: That's probably not the argument I would start with. I would choose a different topic. Not because it isn't valid or real, but because it's not the primary source of ocean plastic, it's not the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions. Just things like that. Keeping -- is this the one I want to deal with? I want to fight for? For me it wouldn't be, but if it is for you, talk to your local food agencies. Because they have -- they know the work arounds, and the -- the what you need. >> JENNIFER PETERSON: Great point. >> MANDI GOODSETT: I wouldn't add much, I would just say in the chat, serve fruit, think about if there are creative alternatives that would allow you to use less packaging. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: You make me think of my brother Zach who used to say, banana, nature's wrapping. >> JENNIFER PETERSON: I'm going to let you run through those final two slides to remind folks about the -- what's coming up, and thank you again to our presenters, our panelists, such excellent work, your passion is pal pative. >> REBEKKA SMITH ALDRICH: Thanks again. We've got one more entry into the series, we're going to be focusing on collective impact and climate action. What does it really take to create programs and partnerships that catalyze that whole idea of collective impact that it's not libraries alone that are going to solve the problems of our communities and make our communities stronger, but we have to find allies in that work. And so that second attribute of a sustainable library being a catalyst for social cohesion and civic participation, we're going to focus in the culminating event of the series, we have amazing speakers from all across the country who are going to be helping us really understand what it takes to be impactful in this area. So I hope you can join us for that. And as always, I throw my contact info up here. I love to hear from you, please tell me what you're up to, we love to feature what libraries are doing from all over the country, even if you're not part of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative we invite you to be part of the community of practice, you'll find your part time there. As well as that Sauce taken RT in ALA. There's a growing group of folks who want to make a difference and we can all learn from each other. We've just got to keep iterating. We're here to help with that. Thanks again for coming and thanks again to WebJunction and OCLC for hosting us.