New Roles and Changing Landscapes, ACRL division level committee (member)

Discussions on CUPA (college and university professional association) work on rewriting national library job PDs; discussion on the work on the OER course development on dealing with change in libraries, and the EDI pipeline work.

Climate Change Conversation/World Café (4 hour workshop)

Sponsored by SustainRT and ALA President Loida. The session was learning while experiencing how to run a World Café style conversation session on dealing with climate change.  Key highlights:

• An opening mindfulness breathing exercise to get focused after a crazy ALA and city experience; also had a labyrinth on paper to trace your finger through or use a pen was grounding and centering
• Term “Transformational Resilience” to explain what we need to do now, transform or regenerate while we remain resilient in the horrible state of the world today.
• Idea of doing “snack meditation” to help take care of ourselves in this stressful time; RE: any small moment you have, take time to breath and be present, and letting the mind relax
• Art, writing and poetry are still very important; recited the Green Gulch Farm poem “ we live in all things, all things live in us” AHHHH!
• Espen Stokes’ Five Ds: distance, doomsday, dissonance, denial, identity
• Libraries as Climate Agents; librarians are the most trusted profession after nurses; libraries are culture of trust, a third space, have resources, make connections, can amplify partner voices
• 2020 Earth Day 50^th Start a celebration that day that lasts all year perhaps? Idea of a Human Library climate change themed
• BOOKS: Beautiful World our Hearts Thought Possible; Pleasure Activism
• AUTHORS: Adrianne Maree Brown; Kathleen Dean Moore, Octavia Butler, Grace Lee Boggs
• CHECK OUT: Art of Hosting by Kristen Mastel, U of MN (*download!!)
• WORLD CAFÉ: (quick guide to World Café )
  • This is a practice not a facilitated discussion!
  • Min of 12 people; small round tables with groups of 4-5 max; at least more than an hour; Provide snacks; bring foods to share
  • Include a centerpiece of earth (we have cut juniper pieces, but could be flowers, potted plants etc) ; also have large butcher paper and markers to draw, write
  • Have 3 questions, that are open ended but with solid structure
  • Set the context, why you are here and some guidelines; do a warm up “what is stirring in your right now about Climate Change?” Think, draw/write, then share in small group. (*could also hire a student/volunteer who can draw to be your graphic recorder for small groups!)
  • Each questions will take 20 mins; open one at a time; spend time in small group discussing, drawing, etc; make sure everyone has a chance to share with diverse perspectives and listen in each group
  • Either share out the large group from each table OR have a host stay at the table to share with the next group; since at the end of each question, move to a new table, new people

SustainRT Program: Carbon Offsets Panel

Uta moderated an amazing panel of mainly non librarians on carbon offsets. We are looking 544 arctic square feet a year. This IS a critical time people!  First, always think to reduce and cut back.  The gist is this: Use only 3^rd party certified carbon offset programs; these not only help the earth, but help others (often women, marginalized populations) trying to develop real projects that are earth and people friendly! Social justice and earth justice program.   1 domestic flight = 1 tome of carbon pollution

Panelist 1: Blake of Cool Effects Carbon Company of about 500,000 people; First, reduce your carbon (they offer resources and tools to guide you!), then look to offset your travel. 90% of their work goes to support projects from solar cookstoves to biogas to forest regeneration.

Panelist 2, Jennifer, director of Center for environmental Leadership; Conservation International.  “We need to work with businesses if we really want to change things” Have over 200 partners now. REDD+  helps developing nations to get carbon lower thorough incentives such as empowering women and their project and education (Ex: Alto Mayo protected forest in Peru that is being decimated; they were using ag practices that don’t work in that climate either; so educated them on growing shared grown coffee that is good and why logging is not helping, etc.)  United airlines now offers carbon offsets purchases when you buy a ticket, from working with this group.

Panelist 3: Lisa of SustainCERT, part of Gold Standard Foundation (Swiss) started from WWF who realized carbon offsets were being offered with horrible consequences like taking land from native owners to do wind turbines. Need to certify carbon offsets! Need to reduce in a robust and permanent way; also must positively support sustainable development/local community! They also do impact investment funds to show the truth in the fluff.  Their project cycle can take 9 months to 2 years, very thorough.

Panelist 4: David Selden, librarian at National Indian Law Library in Boulder. Their library analyzes and cuts back on 4 things:  energy consumption, paper consumption, air travel, waste (reduction). Yes when it was volunteering and paid on your own or through your travel funds people did not do it. They now decide on a project a year for their carbon offset support. They used the data, proved $$ savings to get admin on board and now use their library budget to pay for carbon offsets when they need to travel

–  if you can show your admin you are saving in other ways, can you use that savings toward the offset purchase? OR will you be willing to pay it yourself ($13-20 a trip!)? its only 2 fancy Starbucks coffees you are giving up!

ACRL ULS Mid-Level Managers Discussion Group

Somewhat good discussion and sharing in a confidential ways about struggles as middle managers. EDI came up in hiring and many were very interested in OSU’s search advocate program.  Too large a group to have serious conversations but did learn a good process managers might use called Situation Behavior and Impact  (SEI) in order to help people grow and change; also “Cultural humility” and “Other oriented” as key terms and ideas for being more open minded.

ACRL EDI Discussion Group (visiting, not member)

Some updates and sharing:

• Only 9 people in the room, including the soon to be chair Derrick Johnson from American U
• Diversity Alliance Task Force ending next year – looking to get this wrapped into this committee!
• Would like to create a TOOLKIT including webinars about it, to help educate marginalized populations and new librarians on things like tenure, and job negotiation
• Mentioned our DSP – suggested they look into U of IL scholarship (need to follow up on what this is??)
• Asking people to please submit EDI related presentations and poster ideas for ALA 2020

Then this happened….   this was annoying when a white male administrator talked for more than 35 minutes about his “great new position” Coordinator of EDI at LARGE RESEARCH Library, both annoying that he dominated so long, and that he thought this idea of a position was the best things ever. I finally called him out on the job a bit “so you can let of POC make the changes your library needs to make in this role and not you as an administrator work on changing your culture and policies?!?” but I did not call him out on dominating the conversations; should I have?? Idk! It was not my group, I was visiting, and others (almost all marginalized populations) did ask him questions that kept him going forever. !?!?

SustainRT  outings: 

US Botanical Garden Tour with the Sustainability Round Table

SustainRT Leadership Dinner