Preliminary Investigation of Sustainability Awareness and Activities among Academic Libraries in the United States

This paper explores sustainability, sustainability awareness, and how it is measured in academic libraries in the United States, and considers how assessment tools or key performance indicators (KPIs) could enhance sus-tainability efforts in these libraries. The American Library Association core values include sustainability, and several other associations outline the need for sustainability and provide suitable policies and guidelines sur-rounding sustainability for its successful implementation. However, owing to the complexity of sustainability, often only one of the issues (i.e., social equity, economic feasibility, or environmental stewardship) is addressed, with little consideration for their interactions with the other issues, and most often, is not directly assessed or measured. Therefore, this study assessed sustainability awareness and sustainability efforts and how they are measured in US academic libraries using a survey. Although a limited response was received, the results indi-cated that few libraries embraced sustainability holistically, with limited assessment of sustainability initiatives, and little direction from leadership. However, for sustainable solutions, it is necessary for library leadership to recommit to their values, promoting a culture of sustainability through continual assessment to benefit their communities in the long term.