Our Advent Calendar last year focused on the celebration of UL50, showcasing some of the best images from the UL archive, telling the story of UL from the very beginning. This year, the Special Collections and Archives Advent Calendar will focus on sustainability.
Sustainability is a key concern for today’s society, ensuring we are doing everything in our power to safeguard our planet for future generations. Sustainability operates at every level of society, from global and national strategies to fight climate change, to the development of new technologies and renewable sources of energy, to individual responsibilities to reduce our carbon footprint and have a positive impact on the world around us.
Our advent calendar this year focuses on the issue of sustainability in relation to preserving and caring for heritage collections in perpetuity. Sustainable collecting goes beyond just taking a considered approach to energy and materials use, to the very question of what we collect and why. 1.
Subscribe using the box on this page, or check back each day in December to explore how questions of sustainability shape the collection, curation and dissemination of archives and special collections at UL Library.
For more information on UL Library’s sustainability initiatives, click here. To read more about UL’s Sustainability Framework 2030, click here.
UL Sustainability Framework 2030
UL has always been committed to enabling students to become engaged and socially responsible citizens – individuals who can create positive impact both within the region and internationally. We are now building on this commitment by wholly aligning ourselves to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
This UL sustainability framework was created to shape UL’s holistic response to sustainable development. It seeks to illustrate the value of adopting a mission-oriented approach to systems innovation, and the need for universities to play their role in exploring, envisioning, and experimenting across and within all sectors of society.
Ultimately, the document is intended to:
- Inspire the collective vision of UL as a Sustainable University.
- Provide a set of ambitious UL Missions to guide our strategic actions.
- Illustrate an initial portfolio of Mission Projects that aim to positively intervene across all areas of our campus and community.
- Outline the starting points for the postures and mindsets, theories of change, and new ways of designing required to ensure organisational and community-wide participation.
Read more about the framework here.
The Green Library
The library is committed in its contribution to UL becoming a Sustainable University. In 2019, the Glucksman Library launched the Green Library campaign, whereby working to eliminate single-use plastics from the library.
The library strongly discourages the use of single use containers, however reusable cups, bottles and containers that have a lid are permitted, subject to the library Food & Drink policy. Reusable cups can be purchased on campus from the library information desk (€3), the Campus Shop, and other vendors.
Many cafés on campus offer a discount on hot beverages if you bring your own reusable cup.
There are four water fountains in the library where you can fill up your water bottle for free. A count taken in February 2023 showed that library users had refilled 1,333,962 bottles since the installation of the fountains in October 2018 – let us raise that figure to 2million. By reusing a water bottle, we can prevent plastic waste through the reduction in single use bottles.
Reusable water bottles are available to buy from the library information desk at €2 each.
The library also works with an Energy Consultant to monitor our Energy usage in the library and we have carried out ‘Step Up days’, encouraging users to take the stairs, not the lifts.
In the Library Makerspace, where possible, the 3D Printing filament purchased is either recycled, or the make we buy, for every reel of filament ordered, the company plant a tree. We are also working with the Rapid Innovation Unit Research Group, and they are taking our waste printing filament and recycling it, and giving it back to us to use in the Makerspace. Read more about the Makerspace here.
The library also offers access to the sustainability e-book collection2 which is mapped to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This new collection enables students and researchers to explore global issues from multiple avenues to prepare the next generation of leaders for the sustainability challenges and opportunities of tomorrow.
For more information regarding sustainability, check out our sustainability literacy LibGuide here.
- Georgina Robinson, ‘Come hell or high water: climate action by archives, records and cultural heritage professionals in the United Kingdom’, Records Management Journal 31, 3 (2021). Sustainability is listed as one of the UK’s National Archives 10 top priorities for the archival sector for 2023-25.[↩]
- To search only the sustainability ebook collection on the ebook central platform, you need to select “advanced search”, then select the “Sustainability Ebook Subscription” under the collection facet on the right hand side.[↩]
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