Sustainability and Libraries: ROOTS Library Leadership Summit
Join us!
The American Library Association's Sustainability Roundtable would like to invite all those interested in sustainability in libraries to join us for our inaugural ROOTS Library Leadership Summit on August 6th in Zoom from 1:00 to 4:00 ET! This event is completely virtual and free!
Our hope is that this event accomplishes the following:
- clarifies roles and strengths of various library groups doing sustainability-related work
- surfaces shared talking points and goals for external stakeholders
- encourages connections and celebration
- reveals what is relevant to attendees
Some parts of this event are more geared toward leaders in library environmental sustainability. That said, anyone interested in sustainability in libraries is encouraged to attend and can benefit from our discussions. We hope you will join us all day from the opening keynote, to lightning talk presentations by various library sustainability groups, to a Strategic Planning session. See the event schedule below for more information.
Please feel free to direct any questions about this event to the SustainRT Sustainability Summit Task Force Co-Chairs, Mandi Goodsett or Shalini Ramachandran.
Event Details
Event Schedule
See below for the schedule for this 3 hour, virtual event on August 6, 2025:
- 1:00 - 2:00pm ET - Inspiration ⚡
- Introduction
- Remarks from ALA president, Sam Helmick
- Grounding and Reflection Exercises
- Amanda Comstock, Consultant, Empowered by Learning Design
- Keynote Presentation
- Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray, Director of the Environmental Studies Department, Cal Poly Humboldt
- Short break
- Introduction
- 2:00 - 3:00pm ET - Sharing 🤝
- Sustainable Library Organizations Info Lightning Round
- Short break
- 3:00 - 4:00pm ET - Strategic Planning 🌱
- Strategic Planning Breakout Rooms
- What challenges your organization is facing would you appreciate some other perspectives on?
- What are some possible solutions to these challenges? Is there anything you could offer that would help?
- What’s one step you could experiment with towards your priorities?
- Strategic Planning Breakout Rooms
Invited Stakeholders
- DLF Climate Justice Working Group
- ALA Council Sustainability Committee
- IFLA ENSULIB
- IRRT International Sustainable Library Development Interest Group
- Sustainable Libraries Initiative
- Mortenson Center for International Library Programs
- Connecticut State Library - TSFX
- National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) Climate Watch Working Group
- ALA’s IRC United Nations SDG Subcommittee
- Project ARCC
- Blue Marble Librarians
- STAR Library Network
- Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA)
- Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA)
Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray | Author, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet and Chair and Professor, Environmental Studies, Cal Poly Humboldt
Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray works at the intersection of social justice and climate emotions in service of climate justice, especially in Gen Z. She is the author of two books, The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture (Arizona, 2013), on the political emotion of disgust in environmental thought, and A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet (California, 2020), an existential toolkit for the climate generation. Her most recent edited book brings together 30 scholars, activists, teachers, and students who explore climate emotions in higher-ed teaching and learning-- The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators: How to Teach in a Burning World came out in 2024. Ray is interviewed and has published widely on emotions and climate justice in the LA Times, Scientific American, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, Edge Effects, KCET, and Zocalo Public Square. Ray is also a certified mindfulness teacher through the UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center.
Amanda Comstock, Consultant, Empowered by Learning Design
Amanda Comstock is a consultant, coach, experiential educator/facilitator, and poet/artist/dancer. In her work, Amanda’s approach sources from multiple ways of knowing including lived experience, connection with the natural world, art-making, writing and embodied (somatic) movement research. She holds a Master’s in Science in Positive Organizational Development (MSPOD) from Case Western Reserve University and undergraduate degree from McGill University in English and Eastern Religion (2004). She is a Somatic Movement Educator (rSME), trained in the School for Body-Mind Centering® (2018). Amanda has developed and/or facilitated programs in a variety of traditional and non-traditional educational contexts for the past 20 years.
SustainRT Sustainability Summit Taskforce
To organize the logistics of the event, SustainRT has organized a small task force of volunteers, mostly from the SustainRT Steering Committee. Please direct any questions to the task force members.
- Jen Ferriss, SustainRT Councilor
- Mandi Goodsett, SustainRT Past Coordinator, Taskforce Co-Chair
- Shalini Ramachandran, SustainRT Member at Large, Taskforce Co-Chair
- Beth Filar Williams, SustainRT Member