Can we, should we, focus on the core value of sustainability when so many of our professional core values are under attack? While some of our patrons are under attack? As we see the repeated attempts to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services?

This has been a question the advisory board of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative has discussed at each of its past two retreats. The answer was the same each time, an emphatic Hell yeah! And, it turns out, hundreds in this profession are right there with us.

One of the best parts of sustainability being named a core value of our profession in 2019, and confirmed in 2024, is explaining to folks that we are not talking solely about “going green.” We are talking about the holistic understanding necessary to make strong decisions in the context of our world: balancing financial realities with social equity and environmental stewardship. All three—often referred to as the triple bottom line—must be considered to make truly sustainable decisions about things large and small.

The library profession’s leadership on the topic of sustainability has never been more important. We hold space in communities, campuses, and schools across this country. Our choices send the message to our users, supporters, and detractors that we understand the lives of those we serve and that we care—deeply—about the legacy we will leave as professionals.

As our communities face affordability issues, libraries remain a steadfast partner to create the quality of life they deserve, to help support students’ success, and to help job seekers, small businesses, and the resilient web of agencies, organizations, and individuals working to strengthen the social safety net that remains, despite federal efforts to pull it apart.

As our communities face the deregulation of environmental protections, we continue to be a steadfast partner to ensure that facts matter, and that there are nonpartisan, non-commercial civic spaces to learn together and to organize for our future.

As we all face the stunning reality of calculated mis- and disinformation campaigns, supercharged by artificial intelligence, we remain a steadfast partner to not only teach information and media literacy, but to aggressively promote the need for it.

BEACONS OF HOPE

I have the pleasure of being in the audience for the final presentations of libraries completing the Sustainable Library Certification Program. These are libraries—public, academic, and school—that have taken on a challenge to test themselves and practice implementing the triple bottom line of sustainability throughout operations, collections, programs, partnerships, and finances.

These libraries have been working on the certification for multiple years, helping build buy-in throughout their organizations, from the frontline to the administrative offices, out into the community, and into the halls of elected officials who have control over the future of the library. And the results are extraordinary; I have yet to get through a final presentation without a smile on my face and happy tears in my eyes.

Most recently we heard from the Windsor Public Library in Vermont, serving 3,400 souls. They had wins large and small, from reducing their electric usage by $44 a month, to hosting a monthly mending group to help keep ripped or damaged clothing out of the trash, to becoming a champion of Windsor’s “Micromoo,” a free microtransit system in town.

Before them, we heard from Morgan Barker of the Cal Poly Humboldt University Library on the opposite coast. Morgan, who holds the title of “Sustainability Librarian,” led their Library Sustainability Working Group using “slow productivity,” a process that allows for working at a slower pace on fewer tasks at a time to increase workplace productivity and satisfaction, keeping work volume at a sustainable level. And the results are impressive: they created sustainability learning outcomes, participated in a program to lower textbook costs for students, and offered skill shops on sustainability for students, staff, faculty, and the community, among many other efforts that helped them earn the Sustainable Library certification.

We now have over 70 certified libraries across the country. Each has brought common sense, innovation, and infectious good energy to their communities, and more are following in their footsteps. They are not slowing down; they are accelerating, thanks to those that have gone before them. Libraries across 42 states and seven countries are now pursuing this certification. They are finding strength, hope, and energy through the work, owning the fact that they are catalysts, they are models, they are the heart of hope in many contexts.

These libraries are creating opportunities for people to work together—both inside the buildings and in their communities—on positive, measurable goals that have a lasting impact on people’s lives, the environment, and the library’s legacy—regardless of what is happening in Washington, DC.

Recently, at a speaking engagement, I was asked why we keep going at the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, and I answered with some of the above stories. In the face of these libraries’ perseverance, I can’t help but find hope in their work, cheer them on, and hold out a hand to help the next library to follow them on this journey.

Rebekkah Smith Aldrich is Executive Director, Mid-Hudson Library System, Poughkeepsie, NY; cofounder of the award-winning Sustainable Libraries Initiative; a judge for LJ’s New Landmark Libraries; an LJ Mover & Shaker, and the principal author of the National Climate Action Strategy.