Date: Friday, June 6, 2025.
Time: 8:30 am – 12:00 pm
Location: The Wallace Center at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum in Hyde Park, NY
Cost: Regular registration: $35, Friends registration: $15, Livestream Free
Topic: Sustainable Thinking: Ensuring Your Library’s Future in an Uncertain World
The meeting program includes a brief membership meeting, an update on yearly activities, a catered breakfast, and a keynote delivered by Rebekkah Smith Aldrich.
About the Keynote: Sustainable Thinking: Ensuring Your Library’s Future in an Uncertain World
While change is inevitable, most would agree that the pace at which we are experiencing disruption of all kinds is faster than ever before. Sustainability was named a core value of our profession in 2019 in response to the emergence of climate change as a top threat to global health that is also impacting our environment and economy. How will the library community respond? Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, Co-Founder of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, explores the challenges and opportunities for libraries and shares how many in our field are already answering the call for leadership on sustainability. Learn how a mindset that uses the triple bottom line definition of sustainability can change how you see the world around you and shape your future decision-making at home and at work to ensure a more hopeful future. This session focuses on actionable, practical ideas to address climate change that will help you to contribute to a future that goes far beyond “going green,” to create more resilient communities.
About the speaker: Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, MLS, LEED AP, is the Executive Director of the Mid-Hudson Library System, a cooperative public library system working with 66 member libraries in New York State. Rebekkah is also the Co-Founder and Board President of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, a worldwide award-winning project to empower library leaders to advance environmentally sound, socially equitable, and economically feasible practices to intentionally address climate change and co-create thriving communities. Rebekkah is the principal author of the award-winning Sustainable Library Certification Program, the Resolution for the Adoption of Sustainability as a Core Value of Librarianship, and the recently released National Climate Action Strategy for Libraries and its companion implementation guide. Rebekkah is Library Journal’s Sustainability columnist and has authored three books on the topic of sustainability: Sustainable Thinking: Ensuring Your Library’s Future in an Uncertain World; Resilience (ALA Library Future Series); and Libraries & Sustainability: Programs and Practices for Community Impact. Rebekkah is also the author of the Handbook for New Library Directors in New York State and co-author of both the Handbook for Library Trustees of New York State and the Public Library District Toolkit: Strategies to Assure your Library’s Legal and Financial Stability for the New York State Library.