Vera Maria da Silva

vera.silva@cm-seixal.pt
Seixal Public Library

Francisco Vaz

fvaz@uevora.pt
Universidade de vora

Giving back,
a green library project
Abstract in http://ecil2015.ilconf.org/documents/ecil2015_abstracts.pdf#page=3&zoom=auto,-14,716 p.116
PowerPoint version of this document in https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B946bdDBPjGPQl81VFB5Tm1BckU
We should all be concerned about the future because we
will have to spend the rest of our lives there.
Charles F. Kettering

CIDEHUS - Universidade de vora, PORTUGAL

This work is financed by national funds by

FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology
under the project UID/HIS/00057/2013

CONTENTS
I- Giving back, a green library project
Seixal Library approach to green vision
II- Giving Back project:
The beginning
Basic topics
General objectives
Main achievements

Seixal, old town, face Lisbon.

Evaluation in inquest results

Public opinion and external recognition
Relevance and difference
III- The State of reality around Giving Back
Discern between the visible and invisible
Seixal, Public lLbrary

Giving back, a green library project

Giving Back is part of a green libraries movement.
Giving Back helps to reduce environmental impacts and social inequality within the community.
Giving Back is a green library commitment with the community to ensure social and natural balance. The library as part of
the community, it is not an island.
Giving Back in its base is nourished by the community itself, shaping new behaviours, encouraging a reusing lifestyle and
strengthening real life social networks.
Seixal library operates it as a catalyst agent of a continuous synergetic project.
Giving Back aims for an environmental balance and social ecology, ensuring access to essential educational resources.
Giving Back adds, at internal current green processes, an external action lead by library to positively change behaviors in
the community.

Seixal Library approach to green vision

Some libraries are choosing to become green and sustainable. Environmental challenges like energy depletion and climate change
will influence the type of information resources and programs libraries will provide to their communities.
(Antonelli, M. (2008, 1). The green library movement: an overview and beyond.

At Seixal library we aspire to be a green building, in accordance with the

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards (LEED):
natural daylight
shading to filter direct sunlight
linen window blinds
Natural stone flooring
Toxic free cleaning products
LED light sensors to control indoor lighting and water,
improving energy and resource efficiency.
Car park facilities attached to the library, including a bicycle park.
Used paper collection boxes.
Recycle and reutilization projects (book and toys market to exchange
used materials).
Loan and reuse of materials for the activities of the Ludoteca and activities
of the Education department.

Seixals approach to green libraries: a few spacial evidences

Natural light and shading in order to heat and cool the space in spring and autumn;
Coatings with a low cost in cleaning and maintenance;
Equipment positioned in order to save the energy required to illuminate it.

Seixal library wishes to become an ever greener library

Seixal Library approach to green libraries: a few projects

Green activites for emergent literacy and family literacy

Green, little green (Verde verdinho)

http://5sentidos-animacoes.blogspot.pt/2010/01/verde-verdinho.html

The color of the fruits (A cor dos frutos )

http://5sentidos-animacoes.blogspot.ru/2010/01/cor-dos-frutos.html

These activities stimulate:

Active sensory involvement:
Observation of nature, colors, shapes, textures, sight and touch
The smells of nature, sense of smell;
The taste of fruits, taste;
awareness to natural sounds, hearing.

B) Aesthetic and expressive involvement.

C) Social and family interaction processes.

Seixal Library approach to green libraries: a few projects

Think Green (Pensar Verde), activities for young people, a project in progress since 2012, for
preserving the environment, creating sustainability strategies, and promoting green and critical
thought and green culture.
Implementation and increment process:
Information for creating vegetable gardens in
interior spaces, such as at home and in the
library.
Promotion of scientific, technological literacies
and information literacy
Spread knowledge about plants history, plant
globalization, life cycle of plants and food.
Practical activities.
Critical and active commitment of the
participants

Giving Back: the beginning

1- Giving Back origin:

Books seek (Livros procuram), a project for

swapping books and documents.

2 - Giving Back reality:

It occurs in the context of an anomaly in the textbook market in

Portugal. Giving Back is near to the concepts of social ecology
and eco justice (Martusewicz, 2011).

As social institutions, libraries should not remain on the

sidelines of green environmental sustainability
Poster translation, inspired in the lonely hearts
journal adds:
Books seek, young people, lady or gentleman that
enjoys keeping and reading them.
Offers reading delight, pleasant moments and good
company.
Total and immediate availability.

Social relations as part of the environment around us.

There should be no borderline between saving resources
and the challenge to further human development.

Giving Back improving a reusing lifestyle.

Giving Back: basic topics

What is Giving Back ?

It is a project of sharing and reuse of school textbooks.

What sustains it?

Social resources: active involvement of people, library support, media interest.

Symbolic support: solidarity, saving resources and environmental awareness.

Development processes:

Disclosure; collection ; selection, feeding the database, organization,

distribution of textbooks.

Project images in a TV newscast http://sicnoticias.sapo.pt/pais/2014-09-11-projeto-dar-de-volta-da-biblioteca-do-seixal-reutiliza-livros-escolares-desde-2006

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KluBi2rLF30

Giving Back: general objectives

Facilitate means of access to learning supports, a basis for literacies

To promote the reuse of textbooks and save resources
Support family economies (the cost of textbooks per child is about 220 , almost

the national minimum wage)

Contribute to the preservation and sustentability of the environment.

To promote practices that avoid waste.
To affirm ecological perspectives.
Stimulate new cultural practices: citizenship; solidarity, sharing, reusing.
Countering sluggishness, proprietorship, excessive consumerism.

Giving Back: main achievements

Estimate values in 2015: about fifteen thousand school textbooks delivered , which increases the value
to about 2.5 million euros save; 55 tons recycled paper.

IFLA highlights the social role and responsibility of libraries in environmental sustainability.
(See The Green Library- Die grne Bibliothek. Petra Hauke, Karen Latimer & Klaus Ulrich Werner. IFLA Publications, 161, 2014)

Aspects to retain:
- High waste rate caused by the annual selection policy of different school textbooks
(political management)

+ Achievement of a positive culture of sharing and realization

(social action)

+ New attitudes and behaviors within the community!

(social commitment and citizenship in a collective polis)

+ Adopted throughout the region is featured in all the libraries of the District of Setbal, 5 064

848.842 inhabitants, and has also inspired other Portuguese libraries and institutions.
(replication potencial)

Reusing lifestyle !

Positive colateral effects for the library:

Promoting the recognition of the library in the community;
Brings news audiences and readers to the library
Counters library desertification trends (Pineda,

http://rincondelbibliotecario.blogspot.pt/2015/04/desertificacion-bibliotecaria-y.html )

km/

Giving Back: evaluation in inquest results

Service:

90,8% very good and 7,6% good.

Organization:

83,2% very good and 15,6% good.

Divulgation:

52,8%very effective, 37,6% effective, 7,2%

little effect, 0,4% ineffective 21% did not
answer

Expectations:

56% fully satisfied, 35,6% satisfied, 4,4%

somewhat satisfied 0,8% unsatisfied.

Usefullness of
Giving Back:

92% very useful 6% useful and 2% did not

answer

Giving Back: public opinion and external recognition

Engaging audience:
Past years donnateurs

Library regular user

Who people learn about a project

External recognition:

a) Giving back was adopted or adapted by other libraries and institutions;

b) Giving back was highlighted in the Guide for good sustainability practices in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area
(2013), a study from the Center for Metropolitan Sustainability; Faculty of Science and technology of the
Universidade Nova de Lisboa- FCSH. http://www.aml.pt/index.php/download_file/view/1444/514

Guide Objetives :
Identify good sustainability practices in the Lisbon
Metropolitan Area (AML) (km, Population)
To promote the dissemination of good local practices for

sustainable development, their learning and replication.

Creating a grant for worthy and relevant projects for local

sustainability

c) Over time media and social media interest: journals, radio, blogs, TVs news:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KluBi2rLF30

https://

Giving Back: main achievements

reflects the vision of the green movement and as such
contribute for its spread and sustainability within our
society.

library entrepreneurship project with social returns.

a social intervention project that aims encourage the
social market
consolidates the social role of libraries and projects the
green movement before new real challenges
promotes the approach and committed involvement of
individuals with the library and from the library with the
community
shows objective results in cooperation and sharing, as
attitudes for a green social culture

PROBLEMS to SOLVE:

- poverty;
- students with economic difficulties;
- elderly abandonment;
- social integration of handicapped individuals; - -democratic participation;
- environmental sustainability

Giving Back: relevance and difference

Brings new people to the library and increases readers;
Facilitates educational tools for learning, founded criticas
though, knowledge validate, as essential for information
literacy in a culture of information;
Provide opportunities for active citizenship committed to
community development and sustainability

"Tuaspreocupaes,so realmenteglobais?"
https://ornthira.wordpress.com/content-form-method-and-context/

Recognizes the historical role of education in critical

information, political awareness, individual and collective
rights and duties;
States the advantages of social practices and alternative
consumption;
Promotes civic and community participation, bringing
people from the role of spectators to protagonists in the
development of sustainable processes.
Contributes with its results for the objectives of the green
movement

http://osocio.org/message/is-your-worrying-global-enough/

The Astate
natureof
za reality
NO around
reciclvel Giving Back
The planet is threatened by pollution and disfigured by

tensions within its social ecology,

the realities of poverty and abundance become a parallel

phenomenon.
This reality contradicts the sustainability of a worldwide
green society, and reinforces the importance of green
movement, information literacy and other literacies and
civic action.
http://www.esgalla.com/blog/wwf-lecciones-de-grafismo-publicitario-para-una-gran-causa/

Information and literacies are fundamental for the development of informed and critical thought in
the XXI century. But : Information literacy is it a new vision improved from our usual understanding
of literacy? Is it a concept or a process?
LE DEUFF, La culture de linformation en reformation. (2009, 185-186 )

We need:

A citizenship focused on integrating development.

Harmonizes natural and social environments (TheLyon Declaration, 2014).

Green libraries should commit themselves with green environment, green social ecology, green
literacy, others literacies and information literacy, as rutter in the literacies ecosystem .

Giving Back contributes to these aims.

Discerning between the visible and invisible

How to ensure social sustainability at libraries at a time of resource
shortage?
In view of social and cultural tensions, do we need to just concern,
in discourse and practice, about social ecology and ecojustice?
Sustainability is an environmental issue, but is it not as well a social,
political, economic and cultural a eco issue?
Street art image, using forced perspective technique
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/557109416375894728/

Mark Mazower, relates a ideological exhaustion" and that "politics has become an activity devoid of any
vision". But, even with boundaries, libraries may have some vision. Environmental sustainability depends, in
part, on cultural and social sustainability.
Social relations, information are part of the environment around us.
There should be no borderline between saving resources and furthering human development.
Libraries should not remain on the sidelines of green environmental sustainability;
Green libraries should commit themselves to a green environment, green literacy, and green social ecology.

The next green step in libraries? A social and cultural new step?

Words,
they are like a crystal.
Some, like a dagger,
a fire. *

Barbara Kruger

Thank you!
* So como um cristal, / as palavras. / Algumas, / um punhal, / um incndio. (Eugnio de Andrade, portuguese poet).