Random-ish thought: Environmental sustainability is defined by “the three Es,” in order for something to be truly sustainable it must address all three: environment, economics, and social equity. [Read more about this definition of sustainability here.]

Here are three possible Es for a Sustainable Library:

A place where patrons are:

• Empowered
• Engaged
• Energized

Handouts for the Grassroots Library Advocacy 101 presentation at the 2012 New York Library Association Conference

2012 has me broadening the scope of my thinking when it comes to how I define a  Sustainable Library. When I was writing the LJ article on Integrated Building Design last year I kept thinking: “why don’t we apply this type of thinking throughout our organizations?”

Right?!?!

If we take the definition of sustainability as “the capacity to endure” and thread that throughout our organizations, not just our facilities – the policies we write, the customer service expectations we have of our staff, the technology we deploy, the messages we send, all can contribute to having a sustainable library.

Via Beth Fillar Williams:

Going to ALA? attend the Task Force on the Environment Group meeting (7:30pm Fri, Hilton Anaheim, Oceanside) to meet the new co-chairs, and discuss if you want TFOE or make it a round table etc!

RSVP here on the LinkedIn Sustainability Librarians Group page.

In the never ending quest to keep up online I checked out Pinterest and pretty quickly got sucked in.

It completely speaks to my librarian brain to start saving and classifying all the great graphics and photos I come across online!

I’ve got a couple of boards going that I thought would be of interest to fans of Sustainable Libraries:

Sustainable

Solar FTW

Living Walls

and of course… Trees

Check it out and follow my boards so we can find new ways to waste time together!

There were a bunch of exciting stories in 2011 about advancements in solar energy (solar shingles for your roof!) I thought I’d share one that I keep thinking about, MIT’s announcement last July that it is possible to produce photovoltaic cells on paper or fabric, nearly as simply as printing a document.

“… paper solar cells could be made into window shades or wallpaper — and paper costs one-thousandth as much as glass for a given area, the researchers say.”

Flexible, foldable, bendable… solar. Amazing.