1. Dominican University, River Forest, IL, USA
How Can an Academic Library Support a University's Sustainability Plan?
Elena I. Maans, MLIS
Dominican University, River Forest, IL, USA
Since 2010 Dominican has been supporting Better World Books, a sustainable means of weeding books out of the collection. Instead of just recycling the books, Better World Books collects books and distributes or sells them to supporting information literacy on a local and global level. When books are removed from the collection they are scanned into Better World Books, packaged up, and shipped to their facility to start a new life of bringing information to those that seek it.
Dominican University strives to integrate mission with action. With the creation of our Sustainability Plan in 2011, the university now has a road map to creating a more sustainable campus and surrounding community. Our library has been an intricate part to this process during and after the creation of the plan. Through providing a variety of services and assistance the library is carrying out its mission of information literacy and community engagement while also supporting the sustainability goals of the campus.
The Dominican Community Garden has just wrapped up its fourth season of growing food and friendships. Each year our volunteer list of faculty, staff, students, alumni and community members visit our Priory campus to participate in the fun and learning. The library has supplied numerous volunteers over the years and has assisted not only our garden members but gardeners in the surrounding community by supplying a robust collection of gardening books, seasonal eating cook books, and native plantings guides. Leftover produce from our garden is brought to the Oak Park/River Forest Food Pantry. So far since the garden’s start over 150 lbs of produce have been donated.
The past two Christmas seasons in the library have been Sustainable ones, in the most creative of Christmas cheer ways. Instead of using a live or artificial tree the library used over 500 green volumes of the National Union Catalog to create a 9ft tree in the middle of the library. The tree was adorned with snow flakes made from recycled mis-print paper from the library printers, and colorful covers of old Government publications were made into garland. The second Sustainable Christmas added larger than life snowflakes made from old topographical maps which were hanging in the stairwell in the center of the library.
Water conservation was the theme of the 2013/2014 school term at DU, to kick off the year a display was created in the Library Link. The library partnered with the Sustainability Coordinator and her student workers to create a bathroom display that included water conservation facts and issues from the local area. Since the Sustainability student workers were busy creating the display, the library lent their Project Librarian who searched for the facts and created signage for the display. This enabled us to have the most accurate, credible information in our display to properly educate our students and community regarding water conservation.