What Are Libraries Actually Doing About the Sustainable Development Goals?

Everyone says the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), announced in 2015 as part of its 2030 agenda, matter. Far fewer can explain what they look like in a library budget meeting, a metadata workflow, a partnership negotiation, or a conversation with university leadership.

To start to close this gap, Martina Sollai and Eleonora Colangelo reached out to Giannis Tsakonas (vice president of Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche (LIBER)), Gerald Beasley (formerly chief librarian and vice provost at the University of Alberta), Sharon Memis (secretary general and CEO of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)) and Brad Warren (president of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)), interviewing each separately and then compiling their responses to form a collective conversation (which has been further edited for length and clarity). That conversation—the first in a series that will show how libraries are translating the broad SDG commitments into local practice—touches on policy, open science, advocacy, infrastructure, and institutional strategy, tracing a fundamental question: how do libraries turn sustainable development from a statement of values into evidence, action, and influence?

Martina Sollai: We are now only a few years from 2030. There is no shortage of declarations, frameworks, and conference panels on the Sustainable Development Goals. But for libraries working in the real world, what can a practitioner-focused series do that those formats cannot?

Giannis Tsakonas: Policy statements tell us where we should go, but practitioners need help translating that ambition into decisions, services, and priorities. A series like this can show [libraries] what others have done, what can be adapted, and what might work in a different local reality.

Martina Sollai: In that context, Giannis, what are you seeing across Europe? And what would success look like for LIBER? In speaking with librarians, I keep hearing the same tension: they know they cannot do everything, so they choose their own priorities. How do you see that?

Giannis Tsakonas: I do not think we will reach all of those ambitious targets by 2030. But we have been here before. Think of the promises around one hundred percent open access by 2020 or 2025. Deadlines move, and that is not always a failure. Sometimes it reflects the fact that we are learning as we go, and that reality is more complex than the target first suggests. Inside institutions, there are conflicting priorities. The same is true nationally and internationally. Libraries are moving at different speeds, with very different levels of capacity. Within LIBER, we have members with strong infrastructure and strong staffing, and others that simply do not yet have the resources to support what we might call SDG-related services. The key is to keep moving, even if not everyone can move in the same way or at the same pace.

Eleonora Colangelo: That idea of translation feels central. Sharon, from IFLA’s perspective, how do the SDGs actually move into day-to-day library work—strategy, services, staffing, research support, partnerships?

Sharon Memis: One of the great strengths of the SDGs is that they give libraries the language of policymakers. Libraries are often very good at speaking to one another, but not always in terms that translate easily to governments, funders, or decision-makers. If you ask someone whether they want to fund a library, they may picture a room full of books. But if you ask how libraries contribute to literacy, gender equity, education, climate action, misinformation, employment, or social development, the conversation changes immediately. That is what the SDGs make possible. They provide a shared vocabulary, and that helps libraries explain what they already do in terms that partners and decision-makers understand.

Martina Sollai: And yet libraries are still often underestimated. What do funders, university leaders, and policymakers fail to understand about what libraries actually do?

Sharon Memis: Libraries are not just rooms with books; they are gateways to opportunity. They are deeply embedded in communities, they serve people across the life course, and they remain one of the most trusted institutions in society. That matters enormously at a moment marked by misinformation and a wider erosion of trust in institutions. What funders often miss is the full range of what libraries actually do: digital skills, job applications, access to trusted public information, health information, open science, ethical engagement with AI, access to quality knowledge. In research settings especially, libraries are doing far more than they are usually credited for.

Gerald Beasley: I would add that libraries need to be understood as part of research infrastructure, not as an optional service layer attached to it. If sustainable development is not built into research infrastructure, we will face much deeper problems later on. Libraries are well placed to help orient that infrastructure toward more sustainable practices, but they have to claim that role.

Eleonora Colangelo: Gerald, in a 2024 Katina article, you argued that library leaders should explicitly add sustainable development to the mission. What has to change in year one for that shift to be real rather than symbolic?

Gerald Beasley: Mission statements are never trivial. I do not mean a few people drafting a paragraph and walking away. The process has to be consultative, beginning with library staff. Consultation is not just governance; it is also a form of learning. If sustainable development is going to be part of the mission, then the mission has to be shaped through listening as well as drafting. That is how it reflects shared values and acquires real staying power.

Once sustainable development is in the mission, everything should be seen through that lens—whether you are shelving a book, designing an information literacy session, supporting research data, or negotiating a license agreement with a publisher. It does not sit off to the side. It becomes part of how the library understands its work.

Eleonora Colangelo: Giannis, LIBER’s strategy highlights libraries as trusted hubs, providers of advanced services, and key actors in open science. If you translate that into an SDG theory of change, what are the mechanisms through which research libraries most materially move the needle?

Giannis Tsakonas: For me, the key is the human element. Libraries are in direct contact with students, researchers, and communities. We see how people work, what barriers they face, and where their efforts connect to the SDGs. In that sense, the library acts as a sensor in the field. It gathers evidence that might otherwise go unnoticed. That intelligence needs to move upward—to university administrators, policymakers, and decision-makers. Libraries should be able to say: this is what we are seeing, this is how things are being received, this part is working, this part is not.

[Another] mechanism is tied to diversity and open science. The SDGs are not just about environmental sustainability. They also force institutions to reckon with social issues, governance, and inclusion. In that sense, libraries are not just implementing policy; they can help shape it. That is something we have had to explain repeatedly: libraries can influence the way policy itself is made.

And then there is the practical side. Content has to be visible. Infrastructure has to evolve with need. Research data has to remain interoperable. Without that, the larger promises remain abstract.

Eleonora Colangelo: If libraries want to claim that place, what actually persuades decision-makers? What changes minds?

Sharon Memis: The key shift is from activity to impact. Libraries cannot simply say, “We held an event,” or “We support this goal.” They need to be able to say: this is what we were trying to achieve, this is what we did, and this is the evidence that it made a difference. The SDGs are useful precisely because they offer a framework for thinking in targets, outcomes, and evidence.

Giannis Tsakonas: I agree completely. When libraries enter policy discussions, evidence matters enormously. Policymakers are often surprised by how prepared libraries are when they arrive with data, examples, and a clear account of what is happening on the ground. Libraries are close to students, researchers, and communities. They gather intelligence that other actors simply do not have. But it has to be translated into a form policymakers can actually use.

Gerald Beasley: Visibility matters too. A very simple question is whether the library appears in the institution’s own sustainability reporting. If a university says it is committed to sustainable development, is the library visible in that account? If not, that tells you something important.

Martina Sollai: That brings us to a practical issue. How do libraries assess their SDG contribution without turning it into performative reporting or simply adding another burden to already stretched staff?

Giannis Tsakonas: A great deal depends on resources. But the first principle is that libraries cannot do this alone. They have to work with other parts of the institution and build on workflows that already exist. And they have to make the SDGs legible to disciplines that do not immediately recognize themselves in that language. At the University of Patras, for example, we were trying to map courses to the SDGs, and one of the hardest parts was helping colleagues in the humanities see the connection. I remember speaking with a faculty member who was teaching Antigone. Once we started discussing the play in relation to gender equality and the role of women in society, the connection became obvious. That, to me, is often the real work: not inventing new values, but revealing the broader significance of work that is already there.

Eleonora Colangelo: That takes us to open knowledge. A great deal of SDG progress depends on access, reuse, and trustworthy information. How are libraries evolving from gatekeepers of content into architects of open infrastructure?

Brad Warren: From the academic library perspective, that shift has been underway for quite some time through scholarly communication. Libraries have earned a leadership role here because they already know how to create, organize, preserve, and provide long-term access to knowledge. Open access is one important part of that larger shift. The challenge now is not simply building open systems. It is also dealing with the consequences of openness in a changing technical environment: licensing, interoperability, funding models, AI scraping, preservation, reuse. The principles remain strong, but the conditions are changing fast.

Giannis Tsakonas: And that is precisely where collections as data and [Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR)] approaches become so important. Libraries hold deep historical and cultural resources that can support SDG-relevant research across inequality, public health, heritage, climate, social history, and more. But this is not only a technical question. It is also a legal one. Content has to be reusable in practice, not simply digitized and placed online. That means open licensing, clarity around reuse, and infrastructure designed for public-good access.

Eleonora Colangelo: Which connects closely to the spirit of this series, because it is intentionally crossing communities. From your global vantage point, what kinds of partnership between libraries, publishers, and funders most reliably deliver SDG outcomes—whether in open science, equitable access, climate action, or education?

Sharon Memis: Libraries need a collective voice. The SDGs are especially useful here because they offer a shared framework not only for external partnerships, but also for collaboration across library types, sectors, and geographies. What matters most is that libraries do not undervalue their assets. Too often, libraries enter partnerships as though they should simply feel lucky to have been invited. That is the wrong starting point. If libraries go in with evidence of their impact and a clear sense of what they bring, they can negotiate as equals.

Martina Sollai: Partnerships can also mean anything from a press release to a genuine shift in practice. What distinguishes a real SDG partnership from a performative one?

Sharon Memis: Performative partnerships often sound good, but they are driven more by visibility than by outcomes. The strength of the SDGs is that they give partners a common language and a common structure for deciding what they are actually trying to achieve together. And again, libraries are a ready-made cultural infrastructure. They provide trusted professionals, access to accurate information, and inclusive spaces for encounter and exchange. Those are not marginal assets. They are central ones. Libraries are not subordinate to big tech. Big tech may have scale, but libraries have something it does not: trust. And that is priceless.

Giannis Tsakonas: Sincerity matters too. Libraries can tell when a partner is responding with genuine goodwill and when the response is merely symbolic. Dialogue only works when all sides are willing to change something, not simply to be seen talking to one another.

Brad Warren: In North America, consortia have shown that long-term partnerships work best when the need is permanent and the structure is built to last. Some of the most sustainable models are the ones where collaboration becomes almost invisible to the end user because the system simply works.

Martina Sollai: Staying with partnerships, the UN has long encouraged libraries to work with governments and non-governmental organizations to advance progress. Brad, how is ACRL trying to move beyond the library silo and encourage library deans to take a place alongside university presidents and policymakers, especially around institutional SDG reporting?

Brad Warren: We already have a good deal of infrastructure for this in the form of data, toolkits, and professional support. The challenge is that we have not always framed that work explicitly through the lens of SDG reporting.

From a US perspective, it has become increasingly clear that academic libraries need to advocate beyond their traditional focus on campus visibility and information literacy. They need to speak to university administrations, trustees, boards, and legislators—the people making long-term policy and funding decisions.

Many library deans do have access to those conversations, but the challenge is to make the case that this work is worth investing in, especially at a time when higher education is under so much pressure. Rather than retreating in the face of those pressures, this is exactly the moment to build these values into the changes already under way.

Eleonora Colangelo: If libraries could make one strategic advocacy ask right now, what should it be?

Sharon Memis: For culture to become a stand-alone goal in the post-2030 agenda, with libraries explicitly included within it. That would matter both politically and financially. More broadly, libraries need structural recognition. They need to be at the top table, not simply implementing policies designed elsewhere.

Gerald Beasley: I agree with Sharon. One reason libraries should be at the top table is because they support equitable and sustainable development.

Giannis Tsakonas: And advocacy has to continue at multiple levels. At the European level, libraries often do have a voice. Nationally, that picture is much more uneven. So persistence matters. Libraries have to keep showing up—with evidence, with confidence, and with a clear sense of what they contribute.

Martina Sollai: Looking ahead, what do you think will be mainstream in libraries by 2030—and what will not happen without intervention?

Sharon Memis: Responsible engagement with AI will have to become mainstream. Libraries are very well placed to bring ethics, inclusion, and long-term thinking into that conversation. What may still not happen without intervention is a genuinely inclusive development model around AI—one that leaves no one behind and recognizes libraries as part of the civic infrastructure needed to make that possible.

Brad Warren: I would add that open infrastructure will continue to expand, but the funding and governance models around it remain unsettled. We still have to work out how to sustain open systems without reproducing the same inequities in another form.

Gerald Beasley: And unless sustainable development becomes fundamental rather than optional, progress will remain uneven. The mission matters because it survives turnover and gives the work continuity.