IN DEPTH
Gloucestershire Libraries: let’s go greener, together
Gloucestershire County Council has declared a climate emergency and is encouraging people to adopt a more sustainable and climate-friendly lifestyle, Gloucestershire Libraries’ new Greener Together project com- plements this wider initiative. Here Catherine Chorley looks at how the project began and what it is achieving.
THE launch of CILIP’s Green Libraries Partnership has been very timely. It bolsters our own efforts and demon- strates that the profession is committed to making real, measurable progress towards a more sustainable future, and recognises that, as community hubs and gateways to information, librar- ies have a responsibility to reflect the social and ethical landscape of the day. The Green Manifesto launched at the 2022 Conference embeds sustainability at the core of the We Are CILIP five-year strat- egy and Action Plan, suffusing each other’s objective with this ethos.
Greener Together is about enabling people in Gloucestershire to build sustainability into their lives: helping the planet; helping the community; helping the individual. Many of the events aimed at becoming more eco-aware and living more sustaina- bly are also ideal for people struggling with the cost-of-living crisis: reusing materials, repairing rather than buying new, making your food go further by making the most of leftovers and reducing food waste, and upcycling, swapping or making gifts, deco- rations and clothes.
Collection development
Gloucestershire Libraries’ Greener Together collection was rolled out at the beginning of 2022. It is also the cornerstone of the wider environmental action of Gloucestershire Li- braries and Gloucestershire County Council. The aims of the collection, in line with the wider initiative, include:
28 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Catherine Chorley BA Hons MSt PG Dip MCLIP, is Vice Chair of the CILIP South West Member Network,
https://cilipswmn.wordpress.com/
l To raise awareness about climate change – past, present, and future;
l to provide practical ideas about how to mitigate its effects;
l to encourage customers to adopt sustain- able living;
l to promote the benefits of recycling/up- cycling/repairing;
l to enable people to grow their own food; l to encourage local partnerships.
Every library has its own collection, and they are all very popular. Books have been flying off the shelves – and there have been noticeable ‘peaks’: first during the drought in July and August, and then when there was a lot of global media coverage about flooding elsewhere in the world. The message is now consistent and backed up by science: climate change is here, and we need to stem its progress.
June 2023
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