Green Libraries Week 2024
Category: #CILIPSGoGreen, Blog
by Kirsten MacQuarrie, CILIPS Sector Development Manager and Green Libraries Network Moderator
Back by popular demand, Green Libraries Week took place from Monday 7th to Sunday 13th October 2024, celebrating library-led sustainability across Scotland and beyond throughout seven fun-filled days of events, activities, blog posts, podcasts and more. Read on for our (beeswax) wrap up!
Carbon Literacy for Libraries
In a UK-wide first, the centrepiece of CILIP Scotland’s Green Libraries Week celebrations was the official online roll-out of the National Library of Scotland’s Carbon Literacy for Libraries Shareable Course, supported by the CILIPS Research Fund. The first training of its kind anywhere in the UK, our shareable course is approved by the Carbon Literacy Project to provide library professionals of all sectors with a comprehensive introduction to carbon literacy and empower them to take action to reduce the carbon footprint of their library services. Led by NLS Green Champions Laragh Quinney and Julie Bon, we came together to grow our environmental knowledge and become certified Carbon Literate Librarians!
I really really enjoyed the course and came away with so many thoughts about what I can do differently personally but also in my organisation, so I have been raving to everyone about it!
This is an excellent course. So well run, delivered and facilitated. Thank you.
My favourite part was listening to others’ experiences and ideas.
All of it was informative, but the breakout rooms where we shared personal examples or ideas were especially beneficial.
Stay tuned for further opportunities in Carbon Literacy for Libraries coming from CILIPS in 2025 and please feel free to email Laragh and Julie at carbonliteracy@nls.uk to learn more about the course and options for sharing it with your own library team.
Taking Root: Scotland’s Green Libraries
In a pioneering first for Green Libraries Week, CILIPS Digital Assistant and podcast producer Leah created a two-episode special digging deep into Green Libraries in Scotland past, present and future. Featuring New Zealand Libraries’ Te Tōtara capability framework, an exclusive conversation between Annika Norrvik of Glasgow Women’s Library and Christina Riley of the Nature Library, and updates from our 2024-25 Green Libraries Scotland Grant Fund recipients, plus an accompanying ‘Green Jargon’ index sheet to make environmental language as accessible as possible and eco-feminism book recommendations from our podcast guests (complete with library catalogue links), this miniseries had a major impact. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!
Nature Writing on World Mental Health Day
On Thursday 10th October as Green Libraries Week met World Mental Health Day, we welcomed experienced creative writing facilitator and NHS librarian Amanda Wright for a fun, friendly and supportive session in which CILIPS members were inspired to explore their literary voices through a playful, nature-infused mix of bite-sized writing exercises. From time and space travel to coal mines, hospital corridors and sunlit gardens, it truly felt like we travelled the world together without needing to leave our desks! Our eco-writing time even inspired Leah to pen a brilliant blog reflecting on how libraries help tackle climate anxiety for all ages:
Climate anxiety and worries about the future can have a massive impact on mental wellbeing… but through and with nature, libraries have become spaces for connection to grow and anxieties to fade. Nature can be the way. Libraries have become a place of hope, surrounded by fast fashion and consumerist culture, they exist as an oasis of free resources which can be recycled for others.
CILIPS Library Litter Pick
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Back and bigger (and this time blusterier) than ever… our Libraries Week Friday afternoon just wouldn’t be the same without the now-iconic CILIPS Library Litter Pick! Having headed harbourside to check out the Nature Library’s newest additions, I took to the windswept streets of Irvine to support library patrons in cleaning up their act, getting stuck into the sustainability spirit by joining our nationwide library litter pick. Even those unable to join us outside were inspired to play their part by tackling their digital carbon footprints – deleting bulky files, refining email signatures and following the guidance shared in this Jisc report. More from CILIPS in digital sustainability coming in 2025!
The Green Libraries Scotland Grant Fund 2024-25
Could there have been a better week in which to celebrate our five fantastic projects-in-progress? From the evolution of Mayfield Secret Garden in Stirling and Inverclyde’s Drying Green Herbarium to a lively range of events and activities dedicated to Growing Greener Highland Communities and more, the CILIPS blog was the place to be for eco-inspiration. Best of all? We’ll be hearing even more from our Grant Fund recipients in the New Year as their projects continue to flourish!
CILIPS24 x Green Libraries Scotland
Speaking of the CILIPS blog, the unique link between libraries and sustainability was very much in evidence at our 2024 Annual Conference this June, but what impact did our commitments have on our overall conference carbon footprint? How did delegates respond to our new and improved sustainability steps? I took Green Libraries Week as my inspiration to share reflections and recommendations from our efforts to embed library-led environmental action into the conference programme. What were my personal top three sustainability steps from CILIPS24? Read on to learn more!
I feel like CILIPS24 could be used as an example for other conferences on how to run a sustainable event.
I really appreciated the amount of thought that went into this! I’ve already planted my wildflowers and am looking forward to seeing them bloom.
It was lovely to see the efforts made to host an eco-friendly conference.
I particularly welcomed the choice of vegetarian food.
I thought it was well considered and kept the issue front and centre.
The all vegetarian menu was great!
It’s a positive message. Bravo!
Library-Led Climate Adaptation
Last but certainly not least, keen green colleagues may recall that this year’s Green Libraries Scotland Action Plan included the pledge to ‘grow… climate adaptation for local communities with libraries as centres for climate literacy’. But what does climate adaptation mean? Doesn’t it risk a defeatist attitude, accepting that climate change is here to stay? And above all, how can libraries help? This Green Libraries Week, we invited our members to gather and grow our collective knowledge of adaptation and the difference that library-led environmental action can make to individuals and communities of all types and locations across Scotland. Read more here.
I’ll confess that when I first heard the term ‘adaptation’ in reference to climate change, I was wary. Don’t give up! I wanted to say (or more truthfully, shout). We must continue to fight the climate crisis! Fortunately, as I continued my research, I realised that climate adaptation is not anti-mitigation at all.
Climate adaptation is not about surrendering to climate change or denying the urgency of acting against it. In fact, it is part of that urgent response by recognising that the effects of the climate crisis are already being felt, here and now, and we must therefore take every action we can to protect future generations.
That means not simply reducing emissions today but creating a better, greener world where fewer emissions will be generated in the first place; not simply greenwashing the industries and corporations most complicit in climate change but restructuring the ways we live, work and spend so that social capital, in every sense, is more justly and thoughtfully distributed. Climate adaptation is about taking the opportunity to live differently. Think differently. Where better to start than your local library?
Image courtesy of Adaptation Scotland.
And that’s a beeswax wrap – for this year, at least! We hope you found Green Libraries Week 2024 as sustaining and inspiring as we did, and are looking forward to growing your own library service’s commitment to environmental action.
If you haven’t already, please be sure to join our free, friendly and informal Green Libraries Network, where fellow Green Champions in LIS come together online to share ideas and inspiration. Perhaps we’ll even see some of you at the Green Libraries Conference on Monday 25th November at the British Library in London (click quick, early bird booking ends this Friday 25th October)!
Wherever you are in Scotland or around the world, we believe that every library can be a green library. Thank you for joining us on this year’s Green Libraries Week journey and remember: ‘if you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need’ (Cicero, 46BC). See you soon, sustainability superstars!