Green Libraries through a children's literature festival #cilipconf23

I'm still at the CILIP 2023 conference in Birmingham, UK at a session on Climate change and climate justice, and here is a quick liveblog. Adele Karwat (Service Manager, Libraries & Archives, Blackburn Central Library) started by giving an overview of the Blackburn with Darwen authority - for example 21.3% of the population is under 15. The authority has a Climate Emergency Action Plan, and library input has tended to be around everyday things, such as using electricity. They saw their annual Children's Literature Festival as an opportunity to do something more impactful.
Karwat highlighted the contribution of author & poet Christina Gabbitas to the festival (including a Save us from plastic poem). They used the CILIP Green Library fund, and they involved other authors in the festival, reaching over 2000 children. As an example, BB Taylor used Morris the Millipede to get across messages about environmental impact and what you can do to help creatures survive. They had input from the Council on themes to do with recylcing etc. There was also a competition to do with children writing about saving the planet.
The project enabled a lot of positive outcomes including: shared family learning; enabling book gifting; being an acknowledged distibution point for environmental knowledge; raising the library profile; having good partnership with the school, Council etc; empowering children. Thus it developed the environmental literacy of the library, and also contributed to the Councils's strategic goals. There were of course costs, so the CILIP funding was very useful. This is a video of primary school children reciting Gabbitas' poem Save us from plastic https://youtu.be/k90z7cNBAQ8 Another useful link is CILIP's Green Libraries Manifesto
Image by Sheila Webber with Midjourney, I gave up trying to get an image using a "library" prompt as Midjourney's iamge of libraries is so conventional

Climate Action in Libraries: Creating a More Sustainable Future by Engaging and Inspiring Youth #WLIC2022

The last formal session I attended at WLIC in Dublin was Climate Action in Libraries: Creating a More Sustainable Future by Engaging and Inspiring Youth, organised by the IFLA Environment, Sustainability and Libraries Section, Libraries for Children and Young Adults Section. There were six short talks 

 1. The Libraries Inspiring Young People toward Sustainable Futures: A Danish Example from Søren Dahl Mortensen, Odense Central Library, Denmark. The focus of their project was sustainability and also new ways of lending. They decided to make recycling kits for lending out, asking young people about what should be in the kit. The first is a DIY kit has tools and guides useful for when you move away frm home e.g. drill, tool box, instructions so people can do practical things like put up pictures and shelves. The 2nd is a Party Kit with popcorn/candyfloss machine, lights etc. There is also an Outdoor kit, a food/gastronomy kit and a Scrap Sculpture kit. There were discussions abut whether these were things for libraries to do, but the answer is, yes they are! 

2. Coatian Libraries Engaging Youth in Sustainable Practices from Alica Kolaric, University of Zadar, Croatia . The speaker identified that there were lots of library initiatives and she highlighted some of them. (1) "we sow and plant" sowing and monitoring growth of plants (2) Celebration of World Bee Day (3) Children learning about local meadow plants (planting some more bee-friendly plants) and bees (4) Creating a picture book with stories from local folk tales and ecological messages (5) Making a wooden composter (6) Ecologically themed puppet show (7) Stribor Forest project, an instructive trail - the library collaborating with a local hiking group (8) Book shelves aith ecologically themed books (9) Lavender days - children harvesting this local crop and making lavender bags etc. in the library (10) Eco themed storytelling (11) Green library project in Zagreb with exhibitions, walks etc. 

 3. Training for Teachers and Librarians About Sustainability Through Picture Books and Comics. An Example from the Bibliothéque Nationale de France (BnF) from Emilie Bettega, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, France. She provided a full text paper here https://repository.ifla.org/handle/123456789/1998 She highlighted that the new Bibliothéque Nationale building contains in the middle an urban forest with cute animals! There is a reading room for sustainable development and also a section of the website devoted to sustainable development. They collaborate with the EAC on training teachers about how to use picture books and comics in sustainability education. Also they collaborated with Cite des sciences et industrie, and a key part of this was enabling teachers to help pupils create their own comics, learning how to use an app that supports creation of comics. This led in turn to the idea of having training for librarians. 

 4. Youth and Environmental Emotions Project – Public Libraries Supporting Youth to Treat and Express Their Emotions and Views Concerning Environmental Issues from Veera Visuri, Helsinki City Library, Finland. There also is a paper for this https://repository.ifla.org/handle/123456789/1957. This started from the fact that young people are experiencing climate anxiety and thinking about the role of public libraries in countering this anxiety. The project involved libraries in 4 cities: main target groups were people aged 13-20 an also librarians (who can continue the work). They carried out a survey to get the young people's own ideas. There were lots different ideas (see the picture above) in libraries, some also in schools and youth centres. They also used social media e.g. TikEok, Instagram, Youtube etc. on themes such as tips, environmental feelings. They had campaigns which solicited questions and then experts answered them in videos. Providing the information, events etc. where the young people were situated was important (physical and virtual places). They are publishing a practical guide to events and activities, to support people organising these. 

5. Tales, Videos, Games and Environmental Education to Engage Children and Young Adults: Looking for Funny Approaches to get Involved With SDGs from RECIDA (Spain) from Rosario Toril Moreno, National Centre of Environmental Education, National Parks Autonomous Agency, Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Spain (coauthored with her collagues). There is a full text paper here https://repository.ifla.org/handle/123456789/1962. RECIDA is a network of green libraries with working groups for different projects. Their website is http://www.recida.net and they participate in a lot of social media platforms. They loan collections, suitcases with different materials in them, have mobile libraries and run things like environmental storytelling. They have incorporated SDGs into readings that teachers can use, and create videos e.g. on how to take care of animals and the forest. They have created games e.g. SDG escape room. They encourage young people to carry out investigations and activities e.g. creating gardens, monitoring air quality. 

 6. Green Initiatives Towards a Sustainable Future: Insights From Libraries in Kenya from Arnold Mwanzu, Aga Khan University, Kenya. His paper is here https://repository.ifla.org/handle/123456789/1956. As not much was known what was being done in Kenyan libraries to address these green issues, they did some research. They used interviews, observation and document review and looked at libraries in a variety of sectors. May librarians were not familiar with the concept of green libraries, but in fact they were carrying out green library practices. Examples are rain harvesting, using natural lighting, tree planting inside the library (all had planting either or inside the library, and sometimes students were involved), discouraging printing and generally using less paper, using solar energy. Young people are involved in greening events (e.g. collaborating with a school on tree planting). They propose more involvement of young people, having performance evaluation for the green aspect of libraries and maintaining the green library standards.

Integrating information Literacy

Not new, but I just came across it.
Feekery, A. (2013). Conversation and Change: Integrating Information Literacy to Support Learning in the New Zealand Tertiary Context Learning Designs and Teaching Strategies, Research Methodologies. PhD Massey University. This addressed the research question "What factors impact on the successful embedding of information literacy across the four-year Bachelor of Environmental Planning (BEP) programme to support students to be effective learners in higher education?" using participatory action research. Insights and recommendations are also here if you don't want to read the thesis. I have mentioned Feekery before in connection with the Information Literacy Spaces blog. The full thesis is at - https://ako.ac.nz/knowledge-centre/conversation-and-change-integrating-information-literacy-to-support-learning-in-the-new-zealand-tertiary-context/thesis-conversation-and-change/

In case you are interested, I came across it whilst searching for articles from this other PhD study of IL integration in New Zealand higher education (I had had a sudden blank about the author's family name and was doing a lazy search to re-find them)
Wang, X. (Li) (2010). Integrating information literacy into higher education curricula: An IL curricular integration model. PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/41747/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Xmas wreaths of East Sussex 2, Flint Owl Bakery, January 2020.

Information and Awareness for Sustainability #ecil2015

The first invited speaker today at the European Conference on Information Literacy 2015 in Tallinn was Mikhel Kangur, on Information and Awareness for Sustainability. The key theme for the conference was sustainability and green issues.
He started by defining sustainability and highlighted the particular problem areas for earth e.g. population, scarcity of fresh water, climate change, threat to the biosphere. He then talked specifically about Estonia: environmentally they were in a relatively safe position, but this could be a trap. Estonians (according to surveys) consider themesleves quite environmentally aware. However, behaviour or mentality of Estonins gives a different perspective: a survey had shown that Estonians scored lowest in Europe in terms of considering water or energy conservation, or reducing waste in everyday life. A survey asking them about their behaviour showed that Estonians scored low in terms of, for example, participating in action groups. He showed an interesting diagram which showed that Baltic countries (including Estonia) were different from the "protestant Europe" group (including Nordic countries) in terms of "Survival vs. self-expression values". Thus although the Estonian economy was comparable, there was still this difference: there was knowledge about the problems, but not so much the will to change (and Estonians are not alone in this).

Also Kangur noted that there was a lack of holistic systems looking at all these issues together. He took an example of the Baltic sea, and showed that there were various Governments/ organisations responsible for it, who did not necessarily collaborate to ensure its sustanability. Although there are techincal solutions being developed (for example, to desalinate salt water) these are expensive (and therefore not necessarily sustainable.

Thus there is a need to go beyond just informing people, and raise consciousness that people must take action snd change their behaviour, otherwise nothing will change.