Academic libraries were originally created to support the research and teaching/learning needs of faculty and students. But they are also uniquely well-suited to help humanity achieve sustainable solutions to its economic, social, and environmental challenges.
Global crises—armed conflict, environmental devastation, failures of health and education programs—are rapidly driving humanity further and further away from achieving sustainable solutions to its economic, social, and environmental challenges. After working nearly 20 years as a university librarian in Canada and the US, I am convinced that although academic libraries were originally created to support the research and teaching/learning needs of their parent institution’s faculty and students, they now also have an important part to play in meeting these challenges. Therefore, academic library leaders should explicitly add supporting sustainable development to their library’s mission statement.
There are many definitions of sustainable development (SD). Nearly all begin with the assumption that SD relates to human development at the global scale. It is used most frequently in relation to the consumption of natural resources. The phrase “Think globally, act locally” is often associated with SD.
The classic definition of SD is still relevant, and it is the one I’ll rely on here. It was first articulated in the well-known 1987 report of the UN’s World Commission on Environment and Development (UN, 1987), more generally known as the Brundtland Report:
“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
On Sept. 25, 2015, as part of its bold 2030 agenda, the UN announced 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), illustrated in Figure 1.
These interconnected goals are rooted in a respect for the fundamental dignity of each human being, and, as the 2030 agenda puts it, the determination to “reach the furthest behind first” (UN, 2015).
Some academic libraries are already acting in support of SD: they reduce waste to a minimum, they share resources widely, they partner with charitable organizations, etc. Not all of these actions have been designed and developed with sustainability in mind, but it is striking how far they have taken academic libraries down this path.
A list of 13 Top Action Tips for academic librarians has been developed and made available by the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI) SDG Publishers Compact Fellows Action Group, of which I am a member (see https://www.sdgcompactfellows.org/top-action-tips/academic-librarians). These tips are not only intended for library leaders: they also address issues such as collection development, curation, metadata, and assessment methodologies that require the expertise of librarians at all levels. Some actions that can be undertaken more or less immediately include:
I believe actively supporting the UN’s 17 SDGS is currently the most practical and effective way for academic libraries to support SD. As Gro Harlem Brundtland, the leader of the UN’s so-called Brundtland Commission, has recently put it: “The Sustainable Development Goals themselves are the chart to see us through the storm” (UN, 2019).
An academic library can support “ending poverty in all its forms everywhere” (Goal 1), for example, by identifying and filling gaps in its collection; by publishing guides to its holdings; by adding “poverty” to the catalogue’s searchable keywords; by helping to curate appropriate teaching materials; by eliminating financial barriers to collections access; by reaching out to local, national, and international poverty action groups; etc. One way to help “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (Goal 4) would be to negotiate contracts with publishers that allowed for remote alumni/community access to scholarly resources. And academic libraries can encourage “peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development” (Goal 16) by providing access to non-affiliated local charities and not-for-profits.
Measuring the impact of such initiatives may not be easy; but explicitly making support of SD a new role for academic libraries will enable them to be reported as mission-specific achievements.
Knowledge brings responsibility. If we learn that our house is on fire, we do whatever we can to save lives and minimize damage. This essay is not addressed to people who deny there is a fire, and if we admit there is one, it is surely not enough to stand aside and point out that we did not start it or stoke it. SD matters because without it, the fire will continue, and our house will burn down.
The social issues that need to be addressed most urgently are both a cause and a consequence of humanity’s inability to develop societies in a sustainable way. One of the many reasons to deplore racism, for example, is because its existence prevents societies from adequately tackling issues associated with poverty, hunger, poor health, inadequate education, gender inequality, and poor sanitation—to name only the first six areas of concern outlined in the SDGs. But if racism is a cause, it is also a consequence. Racist ideologies flourish in societies engaged in unsustainable behaviors.
Furthermore, without SD, we will continue to be vulnerable to so-called “threat multipliers,” such as climate change, which poses not only environmental challenges but also creates risks in social and economic domains.
Academic libraries were originally created to support the research and teaching/learning needs of their parent institution’s faculty and students (Curzon & Quinonez-Skinner, 2018). Their administrators may not feel they have the agency or the funding to go beyond these traditional roles.
But academic libraries, whether public or private and whether supported by taxes or not, have a social role that extends beyond supporting research and teaching/learning. They benefit from and contribute to society’s networks of information resources. They draw from their surroundings the resources that allow them to operate. Also, their support for research and teaching/learning is profoundly affected by the impact on education of society’s failure to address SD.
So, despite, or perhaps because of, their two foundational roles, and although public libraries have often adapted more easily than academic libraries to the mission of supporting sustainable development, academic libraries are uniquely well qualified to do so too. They are typically able to collect and make available exceptionally deep and wide ranges of teaching/learning and research resources; and they often have more robust and mission-oriented technology platforms than non-academic libraries.
Furthermore, achieving progress on SD will require a high degree of critical thinking and knowledge of the correct way to discover, evaluate, and use relevant information. Academic librarians have a special expertise in these aspects of information literacy and in how to facilitate them using more and better-quality information resources than any other type of organization.
Academic libraries also have shareable spaces and services, including virtual spaces and services for those community members who have access to the internet, and can therefore offer this expertise and these resources in equitable and inclusive ways.
Increasingly, as multiple surveys on hiring in North America and beyond have shown, job seekers who have multiple opportunities prefer positions that can make a difference to the world. Academic libraries should support SD to attract and retain talented staff.
Finally, academic libraries have a place within the long-established UNESCO priority action area called Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). ESD aims to empower people by giving them the skills and knowledge to live and work in a way that is environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable. Students and other users are far more likely to develop such interdisciplinary life skills if academic libraries partner with their parent institutions to offer them.
Many colleges and universities are already answering this call: the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) initiative currently lists over 1,600 higher education institutions as members supporting and contributing to the realization of United Nations goals and mandates, including sustainability. A recent survey even suggests that some students would pay higher fees to attend a sustainable university (Bothwell, 2022).
While library action on sustainable development has broad support, three common arguments against academic libraries addressing SD merit serious consideration:
1. SD is simply another version of community engagement; we have been doing that for years, and therefore it does not require separate attention.
I reject this argument for two related reasons. Firstly, SD should be the framing device within which community engagement occurs, not the other way around. While a strategy for SD necessarily involves community engagement, a strategy for community engagement does not necessarily involve SD. Nor can a community engagement strategy embrace all that an academic library can achieve in the SD space.
Secondly, SD is important to the university as well as the community with which it engages. In academic libraries, it is my experience that community engagement often becomes a responsibility that is partitioned off from other library operations. Such partitioning off is unhelpful when SD forms part of the core mission of the academic library.
2. SD is best left in other hands.
Many campuses already have a sustainability office or similar body, staffed with people whose responsibility for SD is written into their job description. It is rare, however, for a sustainability office or similar to have a mandate extending beyond the important work of establishing a sustainable and low-carbon campus. Although most academic libraries should be strengthening their relationship with such campus resources, their potential impact is much greater.
3. The library is already supporting a community of scholars who are focused on SD.
In other words, the academic library’s role in SD is best served by sticking to its support of the research and teaching/learning needs of its faculty and students. There are, for example, already numerous reports linking the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to sustainability-related course content (Goodall & Moore, 2015; Brugman et al., 2019). The library might use these to ensure it is delivering its full support to SD-related research and curricula. Furthermore, since research and teaching methodologies are themselves susceptible to best practice in the SD domain, it might also consider this as one of the ways the library adds value to the university’s research and teaching missions—comparable perhaps to research data management (Ligozat et al., 2020; Lannelongue et al., 2021).
While the support of an institution’s community of SD scholars is certainly necessary, academic libraries can and should also do much more.
In particular, academic libraries should be a hub for non-formal learning about SD. It is unlikely that the reward mechanisms for formal learning—whether for teachers (such as tenure and promotion) or students (such as credentials)—will ever be sufficiently realigned in all disciplines to address the existential and interdisciplinary threat posed by unsustainable societal behaviors. But libraries are excellent spaces for all members of the university community to advance complementary, non-formal learning objectives.
Libraries are also best placed to serve the non-affiliated research and teaching/learning communities—the policymakers, advocates, ordinary citizens—who will turn academic theory into real world practice. Academic libraries should not stand aside from their public library partners in this work.
More generally, the conscious and transparent adoption of a new role for academic libraries has the potential to be as empowering for library leadership as it is for all library staff. Without it, academic libraries may follow, but will not be asked to lead or partner in, their institutions’ SD initiatives.
Of course, academic libraries will not be able to achieve the 17 SDGs alone. They will not be able to end poverty in all its forms everywhere, for example (Goal 1), or ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all (Goal 7). The SDGs are not, from a library perspective, S.M.A.R.T. goals—that is, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-based.
But in the cause of advancing SD, there is work to which academic libraries are particularly suited. The stakes are too high for any of us not to play our part.
I am grateful to Cornell University for granting me the time and resources to prepare an earlier version of this paper. My text was also improved when I shared a draft with colleagues in the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI)’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Publishers Compact Fellows Action Group.
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