A new student-initiated book collection on the topic of sustainability opened this week in Powell Library.
The collection is part of the Community Collections in Powell, a group of collections jointly built between students and faculty that aim to reflect topics students are interested in, said Sharon Farb, associate university librarian for collection management and scholarly communication.
Librarians first thought of creating a collection on sustainability last year to tie into the first UCLA Grand Challenges project, which aims to make the city of Los Angeles completely sustainable by 2050, said Julia Glassman, the librarian who oversaw the sustainability collection.
The library hopes to make people excited about sustainability, aid students in research on sustainability topics and explain the topic to students through the new collection, Glassman said.
“Just as there are a lot of factors contributing to sustainability issues, we want to show that there are a lot of different kinds of solutions to it,” Glassman said.
Some topics the collection will include are food, gardening, climate change, human rights, critiques of capitalism, sweat shops and DIY projects.
Powell librarians are also collaborating with the Graduate Student Association on the project, since GSA already had a sustainability resource center in Kerckhoff Hall, she said.
Ian Cocroft, a third-year political science student and a candidate for Undergraduate Students Association Council Facilities Commissioner, participated in the “Sustainability Is…” social media challenge the library is holding this week. Students posted pictures with the hashtag #sustainabilityis showing how they define sustainability as part of the challenge.
Cocroft said he participated in the photo challenge because he wanted to publicize the collection to students who are interested in learning more about environmental issues. He said he hopes to use the collection to help him learn how to grow his own vegetable garden for cooking this summer.
The sustainability collection will be a permanent collection in Powell open to all students and guests of the library.
Compiled by Andrea Henthorn, Bruin contributor.