Townsend, A.K. (2014) ‘Environmental sustainability and libraries: facilitating user awareness’, Library Hi Tech News, 31(9), pp. 21-23. doi: 10.1108/LHTN-07-2014-0059.
This a good introduction to sustainability and libraries subject. I chose to read it as first, as it is short and mentions the users in the title. When I first started looking for resources on green libraries, I come across writings mostly on the library buildings, so having user awareness in the title was a good sign.
This article talks about Canadian libraries that have sustainability certified buildings and how (if) they promote it in raising awareness of environmental issues.
It starts with a statement that the majority research on green libraries had been focused on the library buildings and our day-to-day procedures. The article is from 2014 and I am sure there is more writings on the sustainable information literacy now, however, I am still finding many writings on what libraries are doing to be sustainable not on how we can support students learning in this subject area.
The article gives examples of different internal initiatives that were organised by the libraries they researched. The initiatives revolved around the collections and their promotion and/or creating resource guides. What was interesting for me was using film screenings to promote resources. I think our art college students would be happy to engage with this kind of events.
When studying for our second unit of the PgCert course, I researched what initiatives our UAL Libraries take to promote sustainability, and it turned out that we have a very good guide to our and external resources that in my opinion needs to be used more in our teaching. Additionally, my colleagues from the CSM Library have created an Eco-literacy Toolkit that aims to help us include climate justice in teaching. I wrote about it more in my blog here. My colleagues are planning to run a session on how to use this toolkit this term – I am looking forward to taking part in it and think about how I can use it in my teaching about evaluation of the library resources.