“Sustainability in Libraries: A Call to Action” released by the American Library Association’s Council Committee on Sustainability

Climate change is the single greatest threat to global health and this generation’s grandest challenge, but many library leaders feel overwhelmed, even paralyzed about where to start. “Sustainability in Libraries: A Call to Action,” a new briefing from the ALA Council Committee on Sustainability, is here to focus attention on how the library community can accelerate their understanding and action, in the areas of climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Readers will learn:

• Why ALA has adopted the “triple bottom line” definition of sustainability as a core value of the profession;
• How libraries can take the lead on climate adaptation;
• Why climate justice work is equity, diversity, and inclusion work;
• How many in our field are already answering the call for leadership on the topic of sustainability;
• How ALA, as an association, is living its values out loud on this topic; and
• Simple, practical steps anyone can take to get started.

ALA President Patty Wong focused on sustainability during her presidential year, noting in her kickoff American Libraries column about this topic, “This is the time to stand together in solidarity…to meet the enormous challenges of the climate crisis and summon the effort to deal with its impact. Climate change is a unifying issue for libraries across the globe, and we must commit to doing all we can to prepare our communities for its effects.”

The authors of the briefing, members of the new ALA Council Committee on Sustainability, represent public, school and academic libraries and have strong ties to the ALA Special Task Force on Sustainability, the Sustainability Round Table, the Sustainable Libraries Initiative and the Executive Board of ALA.

This briefing is free to download through the new LibGuide on Sustainability, curated by ALA Librarian & Archivist, Colleen Barbus.

Watch out library school students, they let me write a chapter in your textbook…

A BIG thank you to Sandy Hirsch for inviting Michele Stricker and I to partner up on a chapter in the new edition of “Information Services Today: An Introduction.” We had a blast working together, as always!

Recent blog post on Massachusetts Library System’s Blue Marble Library Blog

I was recently invited to write a blog post for the Massachusetts Library System’s Blue Marble Library blog on the Sustainable Libraries Initiative’s Sustainable Library Certification Program and you know I jumped at the chance! Thanks Gabrielle!

My post can be found here.

My latest column for Library Journal was almost just three words long.

When I first pitched my latest column idea to Library Journal Executive Editor Meredith Schwartz it went a little something like this: “What if it just said “Climate Action Now.” and we just repeated that line a few hundred times?” She politely steered me in a different direction…

“Climate scientists predict we will look back on the years 2020 and 2021 and think to ourselves, “Those were the good old days.” Record-setting heat, record amounts of scorched earth thanks to wildfires, record numbers of tropical storms, and a record number of freak natural disasters like derechos—that’s what 2020 had to offer. And 2021 hasn’t been much better.

In October, the national security community, including the departments of Homeland Security and Defense as well as the National Security Council and director of national intelligence, issued reports on the climate risks we face. They researched what the inevitable food shortages caused by climate change will mean for national security, what fights for clean drinking water will do to communities and nations, and the effects of the predicted massive climate migration by folks displaced by climate change.

In September, more than 200 medical journals, including The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the British Medical Journal, issued an unprecedented joint statement, “Call for Emergency Action to Limit Global Temperature Increases, Restore Biodiversity, and Protect Health,” urging world leaders to cut heat-trapping emissions to avoid “catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse,” naming climate change as the “greatest threat” to global public health. “Despite the world’s necessary preoccupation with COVID-19, we cannot wait for the pandemic to pass to rapidly reduce emissions.”

Also in September, thanks to Executive Order 14008, 24 major federal agencies issued adaptation and resilience plans that outline the steps each agency will take to ensure their facilities and operations adapt to and are increasingly resilient to climate change impacts. Identified risks include “rising costs to maintain and repair damaged infrastructure from more frequent and extreme weather events, challenges to program effectiveness and readiness, and health and safety risks to federal employees who work outside.” The federal government has recognized through these reports that by acting now to better manage and mitigate climate risks, they will “minimize disruptions to federal operations, assets and programs while creating safer working conditions for employees.”

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

What does your library’s climate adaptation and resilience plan look like? If you don’t have one, you’re not alone. So, let’s get started…”

Read the full column here.

New book project with Rene, Monika, and Adrian is out!

I could not be more excited to announce that a project many years in the making has arrived for public consumption! This project came out of work from the American Library Association’s Special Task Force on Sustainability. I was lucky enough to co-chair that task force with the amazing René Tanner and we got to work with Monika Antonelli and Adrian Ho – our co-editors of the book – through that task force. One of the 52 recommendations that was provided in the final report of the task force was to produce a book with ALA Editions to highlight the topic and the good work going on the field. So here it is!

“As a core value of librarianship, sustainability is not an end point but a mindset, a lens through which operational and outreach decisions can be made. And it extends beyond an awareness of the roles that libraries can play in educating and advocating for a sustainable future. As “Libraries and Sustainability: Programs and Practices for Community Impact,” published by ALA Editions, demonstrates, sustainability can also encompass engaging with communities in discussions about resilience, regeneration, and social justice. Edited by René Tanner, Adrian K. Ho, Monika Antonelli, and Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, members of ALA’s Sustainability Round Table and ALA’s Special Task Force on Sustainability, this book’s many topics include:

• a discussion of why sustainability matters to libraries and their user communities;
• real-life examples of sustainability programming, transformative community partnerships, collective responses for climate resilience, and green building practices;
• lessons learned and recommendations from library workers who have been active in putting sustainability into practice;
• the intersection of sustainability with the work of equity, diversity, and inclusion;
• suggestions regarding the revision of library and information science curriculum in light of the practical need to build community resilience;
• an examination of how libraries’ efforts to support Doughnut Economics can bolster the United Nations’ work on the Sustainable Development Goals, which seek to address the global impacts of climate change; and
• potential collaborators for future sustainability-related initiatives.

Tanner is the Science Librarian and Head of Research Services for Olin Library at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. She has previously published on the topic of seed libraries and their importance in the development of food appreciation and local knowledge of food crops. Ho is coordinator of digital scholarship at the University of Kentucky Libraries in Lexington. has given presentations about libraries, sustainability, and resilience. His ORCID ID is https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7417-7373. Antonelli is an outreach librarian and professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She is the co-editor of the book “Greening Libraries,” which in 2013 received the Best Business Book award at the Green Book Festival. She has earned permaculture certification, and currently serves on her university’s Environmental Committee. Aldrich (MLS, LEED AP) is Executive Director, Mid-Hudson Library System (New York). She is the sustainability columnist for Library Journal. She is the co-founder of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative and a founding board member of the American Library Association’s Sustainability Round Table. Named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker, she is a frequent national presenter and writer on the topic of leading libraries forward in smart, practical, and effective ways.”

Launch Event for The Library of Local at the Kingston Library

So. In 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, we decided to launch a new project: The Library of Local.

With our new friends from Partners for Climate Action Hudson Valley we created four hub libraries in the Mid-Hudson Library System that boast special collections of books, seeds, and tools that address climate solutions, specifically in year 1: food security.

We finally felt comfortable enough to bring people together to celebration this at the Kingston Library this month. It was joyous and hope-filled. Just what the doctor ordered.

On a personal note, this was the first public speaking I did in an actual public setting since the pandemic hit. I’ve been “on screen” for over a year. To say I was nervous was an understatement. My voice shook. I was having trouble controlling my breath. I was overwhelmed with emotion to see my friends and colleagues in person finally. What a great re-entry though. I could not be more proud of this project and the libraries that stepped up to try out this idea. Can’t wait to see what happens next!

I’m looking forward to kicking off this upcoming FREE event with a talk about The Just Transition. Don Lemon from CNN is the keynote!

The Just Transition

If the pandemic had any silver lining, it brought systemic economic, environmental and societal inequities into focus, and the time for change is long overdue. Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, Executive Director of the Mid-Hudson Library System and author of Sustainable Thinking and Resilience from ALA Editions, will discuss the opportunities library leaders have to build community resilience in light of recent events and co-create a new future for their library and their community using regenerative thinking.

Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, Executive Director, Mid-Hudson Library System

Register online today!

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

Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, Library Journal, December 2020

Check out my latest column in Library Journal where I take a look at lessons from nature, The Just Transition, and the new wave of Black activists to help guide how we move forward in the face of the chaos of 2020.

“Climate injustice has deep roots in racism in America.”
-Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, Library Journal, 10.8.2020

Read my new Library Journal article here.