(101) Sustainability vernacular challenges researchers seeking to uncover public library contributions to mitigate climate change: A literature review

This literature review attempts to understand if the vernacular of climate change adopted by the various scholarly disciplines and industries involved in researching and applying solutions to mitigate climate change is a potential reason for the missing link that would provide both researchers and public libraries the knowledge needed to review public libraries’ efforts, evaluate their impact and potentially influence public policy. A heterogeneous literature review was conducted for public libraries located in the United States and Canada between 2000 and 2020. Library and Information Science databases LISA and LISTA were the primary databases consulted. Main search terms included sustainability, environment and public libraries.11 source types were included in the review. In the end, 100 sources over nine source types deemed relevant to our objective were analyzed. The results reveal (1) three main themes emerged: green, environment and sustainable; (2) the definitions of green, environment and sustainable were inconsistent as a result of their relationship to either the social or natural science disciplines; (3) four categories of activities were associated with the three main themes: (a) library building design; (b) outreach/education; (c) Library of Things, (d) activism; and, (5) no one place or source type exist to provide or maintain data on public library activities, therefore they are not possible to quantify. LIS professionals can become part of mainstream research to identify gaps in controlled vocabularies and building robust information systems