This is the story of the UMass Amherst Libraries national-award winning Sustainability Fund. The fund supports the purchase of print, electronic and media resources related to sustainability as well as a teaching initiative and co-sponsoring of campus events

Charney, Madeleine

Connare, Carol

This is the story of the UMass Amherst Libraries national-award winning Sustainability Fund. The fund supports the purchase of  print, electronic and media resources related to sustainability as well as a teaching initiative and co-sponsoring of campus events

Charney, Madeleine K.

ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

Sustainability Fund Fuels Activities at the  University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst University Libraries Publication Series University Libraries 2012 Sustainability Fund Fuels Activities at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries Madeleine Charney University of Massachusetts Amherst, mcharney@library.umass.edu Carol Connare University of Massachusetts Amherst, cconnare@library.umass.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/librarian_pubs  Part of the Finance and Financial Management Commons, and the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation Charney, Madeleine and Connare, Carol, "Sustainability Fund Fuels Activities at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries" (2012). CLS Newsletter (College Libraries Section). 46. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/librarian_pubs/46 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University Libraries at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in University Libraries Publication Series by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact scholarworks@library.umass.edu. P A G E  4  (continued from page 2) Grace Veach , Dean of library Services at Southeastern University, authored the article “Divination and Mysti-cism as Rhetoric in the Choral Space” in KB Journal, 8.1 (Spring, 2012).  It is available at the following link: http://www.kbjournal.orgveach_divination_mysticism. Grace Veach co-presented with Amy J. Harris, “Tracing Boundaries, Effacing Boundaries” at the Georgia Confer-ence on Information Literacy in September. Eamon Tewell has authored the article “Employment Opportunities for New Academic Librarians: Assessing the Availability of Entry Level Jobs,” in portal: Libraries and the Academy, volume 12, no. 4 (October 2012): 407-423.  Caleb Puckett is the new Information Literacy Librarian at the Myers Library of Ottawa University at Ottawa,  Background Sustainability is a rapidly emerging aspect of the curriculum at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. There are cur-rently 74 courses related to sustainability and counting.  Examples of such courses, which traverse disciplines, in-clude “Energy Efficient Housing”, “Community Food Sys-tems”, “Sustainable Cities”, “Climatology”, and “Consumer Behavior.” Sustainability issues are also widely addressed by the Campus Sustainability Initiative which supports stu-dent organizations and co-curricular activities (http://www.umass.edu/livesustainably).  The UMass Amherst Libraries Joins the Force At the UMass Amherst Libraries, a Sustainability Studies Librarian offers library research instruction to classes, as well as on an individual basis to students and faculty and local community members.  A Sustainability Research Guide offers a digital portal (http://guides.library.umass.edu/sustainability) through which users may access databases, catalogs, and internet links, as well as directories of local and regional resources.  Sustainability Fund Fuels Activities at the  University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries C L S  N E W S L E T T E R   Kudos Kansas. Caleb will be working with faculty University-wide to create, develop and implement Information Literacy course modules which will be integrated into the curriculum. He earned a MLIS from the University of Oklahoma and a second Master’s degree in English from Oklahoma State University.  Nicole Spoor recently assumed a new position as As-sistant Professor/Business Librarian at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.  Susan M. Campbell will be retiring as Library Director and Professor at York College of Pennsylvania after 28 years at the end of this year.  She has been very ac-tive in CLS for many years, serving on and chairing many committees, serving as chair of the section and as mentor to four new library directors. She states that she always has considered CLS and the New Di-rectors program the most important professional and collegial networks available to her.  She extends her thanks and very best wishes to all her CLS colleagues.    History of the Fund A natural question occurred to the development team at our Libraries. How can we better support this explosion of learning? In early 2012, the answer came in the form of the Sustainability Fund. Each spring, the Libraries at UMass Amherst work with the Annual Giving Office on campus to create the “Second Ask” campaign. A direct mail message alerts current donors that a student will be calling soon to ask for a gift for the Library. When callers connect with donors they ask them to make one more gift to campus to close out the fiscal year, thus the “Second Ask.” Part of the success of this approach is based on students’ own knowledge about their Library. And most alumni have at least a few fond memories of the Library to share in turn. Largely fueled by students’ interest, the sustainability movement is another topic which they can chat about en-thusiastically with alumni donors. The Sustainability Fund and our campus efforts to “go green” have sparked real interest and generous donations.                                                            (Continued on page 5) P A G E  5  F A L L  2 0 1 2   C L S  N E W S L E T T E R   The “Second Ask” for the Sustainability Fund has resulted in gifts from more than 3,300 donors totaling $150,000 so far. The Libraries will continue to promote and fundraise for this initiative. From the data collected during the cam-paign, it seems we hit a chord, especially with graduates from our College of Natural Sciences. We’ll be looking more closely at this group and plan multimedia efforts to reach out to alumni who could be energized by the fund.  How the Fund Plays Out The Sustainability Fund will be used for collection develop-ment (both print and electronic), exhibits, speakers and films with potential for other possibilities. The first pur-chases we’ve made include the licensing of subscription databases such as GreenR (Gale) and Sustainability Watch (EbscoHost). Soon afterward came a new Sustainability Leadership Initiative for Faculty, modeled on faculty train-ing delivered by the Association of the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). These net-working sessions, which are hosted in the Teaching Com-mons of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, gather faculty already teaching sustainability courses. Their objectives are to map sustainability across the UMass curriculum, develop a set of student learning outcomes and identify courses within a matrix of these outcomes. An orientation to the Library’s sustainability resources will be integrated into this multi-part process. The Initiative will also offer mini-grants ($1,000 each) for the development of new sustaina-bility courses that embed licensed library resources into their assignments. Recipients will also be encouraged to assist with collection development selection in sustainabil-ity topics across disciplines. An Earth Day speaker series is in the works and Special Collections and University Ar-chives (SCUA), another library hot spot for sustainability, plans to access the Fund to award a month-long fellowship to a graduate student conducting research in our unique collections related to sustainability topics. Among SCUA’s material are  Social Change collections, (http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/umarmot/?page_id=547) in-depth Environment holdings (http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/umarmot/?cat=46),     in-cluding the personal papers of Jim Crockett of the Victory Garden which may be located on the web at http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/umarmot/?s=crockett and records from Earth Action which can be viewed at http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/umarmot/?p=645. Sustainability Fund Fuels Activities at the  University of Massachusetts  Amherst Libraries               (continued from page 4)  In 2011, AASHE granted UMass Amherst a gold rating through STARS (The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™).  Only 21 other U.S. campuses have received this high rating to re-flect their sustainability practices. The actual gold star is proudly displayed in the lobby of the W.E.B Du Bois Library at UMass as an emblem of the partnership between the Campus Sustainability Initi-ative and the Libraries. There is great promise that the Sustainabil-ity Fund will continue to support the sustainability movement which has obviously ignited the spirit, minds and actions of the UMass Amherst community. As the fund continues to grow, we plan to establish an endowment to ensure that funds to support sustainability through the Libraries continue to be available.     Madeleine Charney, Sustainability Studies Librarian and  Carol Connare, Director, Library Development &  Communication W.E.B. Du Bois Library University of Massachusetts Amherst  

Sustainability Fund Fuels Activities at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst