West Vancouver, B.C.—The West Vancouver Memorial Library has won the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Green Library Award – Best Green Library Project for its Climate Writer in Residence program. The win comes four months after the Library won the British Columbia Library Association’s Eureka Award for its Climate Future initiative.
The announcement was made at the 88th IFLA World Library and Information Congress on August 22 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In the award announcement, Priscilla Pun, Information Coordinator of the Environment, Sustainability and Libraries Section of IFLA, said, “this project truly deserves to be awarded for its innovative contribution that combines literature and climate in a unique way by creating programmes of education for sustainable development that involve the entire community through a variety of events. In addition, effective energy-saving measures led to a ‘greener’ design of the library itself. Finally, the programme not only has a positive impact on a significant number of its local users but can also serve as a model for other libraries around the world.”
WVML’s Director Stephanie Hall attended the IFLA Conference in Rotterdam to present WVML’s award submission. In her opening remarks, she said, “it is quite an honour to be here at IFLA with esteemed colleagues from all over the world. As I’m speaking here today, part of my mind is back home in Canada where our forests are burning. Friends have fled their homes. The climate emergency is very real for us all here today and we are all connected in this emergency.”
The Climate Writer in Residence program has grown out of the Library’s decades-long record of staff-led climate action, from a staff Green Team starting in 2006, to a Green Building Operations Policy in 2009, to becoming the first library in Canada to be awarded LEED Silver certification in 2011, and to successfully applying for new funding in 2023 to move off natural gas. The program was the first of its kind in any public library in the world, to our knowledge, and featured northern Dene novelist Katłįà Lafferty in 2022.
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