Road Map to Sustainability

By Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, Executive Director, Mid-Hudson Library System; Co-Founder & Advisory Board President, Sustainable Libraries Initiative; and author of Sustainable Thinking: Ensuring Your Library’s Future in an Uncertain World and Resilience

The Sustainable Libraries Initiative (SLI) provides library leaders, which we define as all library workers and trustees, with a proven path forward to co- create libraries and communities that will thrive in the coming years. The Sustainable Library Certification Program and the SLI community of practice focus your leadership to enable your library, and ultimately your community, to become more environmentally sound, socially equitable and economically feasible.

Are you more of a summer or winter person? Spring or fall? Lately, I’ve felt that the seasons in New York are becoming either compressed (in Long Island, where I am based, winters are certainly becoming shorter thanks to warmer temperatures), or elongated (as warmer temps continue, spring turns into summer more quickly as well). I am beginning to notice a change and thinking about how it affects my life. A couple of years ago, I enjoyed a beautiful trek through the Adirondack woods while trying snowshoeing for the first time, complete with a delicate snowfall surrounding our group. I immediately fell in love with snowshoeing, yet Long Island hasn’t had a significant amount of snow, in the past few years, for me to enjoy this pastime in my neighborhood parks.

Instead, winter storms have brought major coastal flooding with heavy rain instead of snow here on Long Island. Last month, the community that I work in experienced more flooding and damage in certain spots than it did during Super Storm Sandy in 2012.