Sustainability in the SDSU Library

This guide provides the community with information on general sustainability resources locally within San Diego County.

Poster display by Sarah Tribelhorn: Sustainability is a vital component of the new San Diego State University (SDSU) Library strategic plan, especially in Goal 2: Resilience: Designed to Thrive.1 This goal details how the University Library will promote sustainable practices, including but not limited to the establishment and enhancement of resource-sharing, open access, and shared storage agreements. The University Library is also planning to establish and further develop campus and community partnerships to determine how we can contribute to our university and city sustainability initiatives. To effectively reach the goals detailed in the strategic plan, it is necessary to understand what sustainability initiatives we are already participating in. Therefore I reviewed how the SDSU Library contributes to sustainability initiatives and presented this information as part of a new physical poster exhibit, “SDSU Inspires Action: U.N. Sustainable Development Goals on Display,”2 that will be on display for a year. The poster exhibit highlights research, teaching, and library contributions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) in San Diego and the greater San Diego region, including initiatives reflecting the university’s place along the US-Mexico border, and features work completed by SDSU’s Metabolism of Cities Living Lab. This exhibit has provided an opportunity to reflect on the work we have been doing in the library, articulate it, and map it to the UN SDGs. This review of current practice within the context of our strategic plan provides a baseline for understanding our strengths and determining the direction of our future endeavors to support sustainability in libraries.

For the exhibit, I included up to three main areas where we are working toward each of the 17 goals outside of what would be considered traditional library work. The work being carried out is not limited to only these, but for the purposes of the exhibit, only a maximum of three areas were chosen. The posters in the exhibit briefly highlight how the SDSU Library and other libraries in our community focus on solutions to the challenges highlighted by the UN SDGs and, where appropriate, include QR codes to other relevant websites or research guides with more information. From https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/25960/33896

This guide provides tools and resources to help you understand the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the United Nations (UN). The SDGs are a crucial first step towards a better tomorrow. SDSU supports all of these goals through coursework and community engagement and this support has been affirmed by the University Senate.

“April showers bring May flowers” is a rhyme many of us recited as children, and while San Diego State usually receives far less rain than England, where this saying originated, it nonetheless serves as a reminder that this month is home to both Earth Day and National Poetry Month! This year we’d like to acknowledge the intersection of those two events, so we have assembled a list of some recent poetry books that focus on nature and the environment. In his influential modernist poem The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot called April “the cruelest month.” Perhaps immersing yourself in a volume of poetry will temper that cruelty somewhat or at least give you a deeper understanding of it. This collection was carefully curated by librarian Markel Tumlin. Happy reading!

Enjoy this curated list of books on Climate Change Fiction by librarian Markel Tumlin. While the phrase “Climate Fiction,” or “Cli-Fi,” has been applied retroactively to such older works as Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993) and J.G. Ballard’s The Crystal World (1966), it has really evolved into its own genre in just the past 15 or so years as public awareness of climate change has grown. Mostly set in the future and focused on dystopian societies dealing with the consequences of climate change, Cli-Fi provides some glimpses of what the future might hold if we fail to stabilize our environment. Exploring this genre seems like a worthwhile endeavor as we approach Earth Day 2024, so we have prepared a list of Cli-Fi novels owned by the library that have been published within the past five years. While they paint often bleak pictures of the future, some also find hope in unexpected places. We invite you to explore some of these possible futures as we move forward into uncertainty.