Vallila Library is a medium sized public library and belongs to the Helsinki City Library. It was the first public institution to seek and receive the EcoCompass environmental label (2011). We created our own environmental strategies and policies, and reviewed such activities as recirculation and recycling. However, we could not decide alone on what kind of greener actions should be adopted; we are not independent actors. It was not always clear what kind of actions should be taken and what to measure. The greatest challenge was nobody had spelled out the concept of ‘green library’: we were forced to view the issue on a broader scale. It seemed that the best option was to show others the road to becoming green(er). Our commitment to environmental responsibility shows that we consider green values to be important. We offer easy access to information on ecological issues and arrange events that focus on environmental issues. We have to tell the world (and decision makers) that libraries are responsible actors and promote environmental sustainability. Commitment to green values may increase environmental sustainability and help libraries to take a new and visible role in changing society.
Public libraries in Finland have a strong history of cooperating and networking. Implementing SDGs and steering the action toward sustainability, however, has been so far carried out mainly out by individual libraries. A larger consensus or common guidelines are still missing, be it designing a new building, customer design thinking or rearranging internal workflows.
This is to be changed, hopefully serving as an example to readers´ communities. The report presented current cases and current best practices on initiatives and concentrated on finding a broader common ground on sustainability work. Helsinki City Library will act as a nationwide accelerator and common voice promoting the step marks toward greener libraries. A nationwide expert network and community of practice is to be established as well. As one example of the development, the tight cooperation between public libraries and basic education in Finnish society will be discussed. For historical reasons public libraries operate to a large extent as school libraries, so the task of supporting curriculum on sustainability topics is a major task for public libraries as well. What does the future of this collaboration and its possibilities look like?
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.