Assessing Environmental Sustainability in Canadian University Libraries’ Strategic Plans

Abstract

Floods, famine, fires: fallout from the planet’s increasing temperature makes the climate crisis a reality that affects everyone (IPCC 2023) – libraries and librarians included. Academic libraries contribute to carbon emissions and waste through managing infrastructure, energy and water use, the purchasing of materials and resources, printing, and so on. While we are facing a dire situation, there is still plenty of room for action. Strategic plans are designed to provide direction and measurable goals which are essential to systematically furthering sustainability on campus. By exploring strategic plans of Canadian university libraries, our study provides an analysis of current strategic priorities and language which can be used to inform future strategic planning sustainability initiatives. The goal of this study is to explore the extent to which environmental sustainability is present in the strategic plans of Canadian university libraries, and to analyze how it is being included, when it is included at all. After a review of the literature, no analysis has been done on an institutional level regarding environmental sustainability (ES) presence in academic library strategic planning. Furthermore, much of the scholarly discourse regarding environmental sustainability in libraries is limited to surveys regarding participant perceptions, or communicating programming ideas related to environmental sustainability in academic libraries. This study aims to synthesize and communicate what is currently being done at the strategic planning level of academic libraries in Canada.