Disaster Preparedness and Community Resilience: Climate Action Planning requires attention in three main areas: mitigation, adaptation, and climate justice. Climate mitigation, or the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, was addressed in our previous article, “Getting Started with Climate Action Planning.” The next area, adaptation, requires strategies that enable personal, institutional, and community-wide preparation and adjustment in the face of the likely impacts of climate change on our local geography. We can no longer simply focus on our hopes that efforts will reduce the impacts of climate change on the future. Even if we did everything right to reduce GHG emissions in the next seven years, we will still experience increasingly severe weather patterns, heat waves, and systemic impacts on food systems, flood plains, and sea levels for the next three decades. Confronting the reality of the damage that has been done to the climate and having a realistic idea of what the local impacts of climate change is an essential component to future-proofing your library.

WebJunction at the Association for Rural & Small Libraries Conference: It’s no secret that the Association for Rural & Small Libraries (ARSL) annual conference is one of our favorite conferences. WebJunction staff have been attending the conference since 2006, and we’re grateful to have been able to partner with ARSL on numerous projects and events over the years. Three members of our team had the opportunity to travel to this year’s conference, hosted in Wichita, Kansas in September. Read about the Inaugural ARSL Award Winners and our session on “Libraries as Social Connectors.”

Advancing IDEAs: Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, 24 October 2023: This is the latest Hanging Together blog post, part of a regular series on issues of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility, compiled by a team of OCLC contributors.

WebJunction Webinars

These upcoming webinars are open for registration. If you can’t attend a live session, all WebJunction webinars are recorded and available for free in the Course Catalog.

Let’s Talk Race: Community Healing through Conversation

Tuesday, November 14, 2023 ◆ 2:00 pm Eastern / 11:00 am Pacific ◆ 60 minutes

Registration: https://www.webjunction.org/events/webjunction/lets-talk-race.html

Library communities around the country are seeing rising levels of division, distrust, and segregation. Recognizing the need for community healing, library staff at the Richland Library in South Carolina formed the Let’s Talk Race team to explore strategies for deepening community connections and engagement. Since 2016, the Let’s Talk Race team has facilitated more than 250 in-person or online discussions, community forums, and events, reaching more than 4,000 participants, and creating opportunities for civic engagement, community connections, and courageous conversations. Earlier this year, the Richland Library launched the open-source Let’s Talk Race Curriculum, providing a set of easy-to-follow resources for other libraries, museums, and related organizations to implement with their local communities. The curriculum includes facilitation best practices, conversation guides, videos, and more. The curriculum provides a learning pathway to help get started, build facilitation skills, and create conversation guides to hold your own circles of dialog.

Living Our Values Out Loud: Programs that Walk the Talk

Tuesday, November 28, 2023 ◆ 2:00 pm Eastern / 11:00 am Pacific ◆ 60 minutes

Registration: https://www.webjunction.org/events/webjunction/living-our-values-out-loud.html

From zero-waste events to upcycling to refreshments, how we choose to carry out our work in libraries says a lot about our values. We can’t just pay lip service to sustainability—we need to practice what we’re talking about! This webinar will be an inspiring discussion with a panel of practitioners who have found ways to design, implement, and evaluate library programs using frameworks that better represent their libraries' values, such as the triple bottom line definition of sustainability and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Stronger Together: Collective Impact and Climate Action Programming

Wednesday, December 13, 2023 ◆ 2:00 pm Eastern / 11:00 am Pacific ◆ 90 minutes

Registration: https://www.webjunction.org/events/webjunction/collective-impact-climate-action.html

Libraries are catalysts and conveners for climate action in our communities. This webinar will feature practitioners who are having a collective impact through collaborations with others in the community, to address the pressing challenges related to climate change. Join these practitioners to hear practical ideas for how to ensure that good intentions have a positive impact on our communities.

This program is supported in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Thank you,

Cathy Lancaster

Youth Services Coordinator

Library of Michigan
702 W. Kalamazoo St.
Lansing, MI 48915
My Pronouns: She/Her/Hers - See www.mypronouns.org to learn more.

LancasterC5@michigan.gov | 517-335-8129 | www.mi.gov/libraryofmichigan
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Join the MiYouth Listserv, created for Michigan public library staff to share and discuss children and teen programming and services.