Green Libraries Grow in SL

Meet Eileen Dumas and Victoria Petersen, cocreators of the Sustainable Living Library, a so-called green learning center on Second Life’s (SL) Emerald City, one of the newer islands in the 3-D virtual world and one devoted to all things environmentally sound.

“Libraries can’t be isolated from information and communities,” says Dumas, special services librarian at the main branch of the Aurora (CO) Public Library for the past 17 years. “And as things go green, libraries need to be at the forefront of that.”

In the virtually renewable environment of SL, it seemed only a matter of time before someone would build an eco-conscious library. Launching in January 2009, Emerald City is sponsored by the Colorado Association of Libraries, research firm TAP Information Services, and the Alliance Library System in Illinois, which is paying for the island’s first year of operation.

Both Dumas and Petersen, the technology manager at the Mancos (CO) Public Library, hope that visitors to Emerald City will find abundant resources to help change the way they live—both “in world” and in real life. The island will host classes, exhibits, and even an organic green market. The two also hope to invite a designer to create vegan clothing made of organic cotton and hemp in the virtual world.

Students are also invited to visit. A media specialist or teacher can log in to SL so their classes can wander the grounds or sit in on a lecture. One upcoming program will cover photovoltaics, the science behind converting sunlight into electricity.

Constructed by avatar Krull Aeon, the library features stone floors, arched wood ceilings, and a gazebo situated near the wind and water mills, which generate power for the island. The library itself was completed at a cost of 15,000 Linden dollars—or $50.

Petersen (at right) is also involved in the real-world greening of her own library in Mancos, CO. The community is finishing up a several-year-long project in building a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified structure, a burgeoning trend in libraries nationwide. (See SLJ’s September 2007 feature “Going Green”). The site will feature an outdoor reading area and a path alongside a river to the community’s only K–12 school. “Sometimes libraries are the first building in their neighborhood to go green,” says Monika Antonelli, librarian and assistant professor at the Minnesota State University in Mankato and author of the Web site greenlibraries.org.

Dumas has even gone green at home, tending her own organic flower garden, where wasps are left alone to dine on the aphids that snack on her rose bushes. She’s planning a garden in Emerald City so visitors can learn about how insects can benefit the flowers and vegetables grown on the island. “But I don’t plant vegetables at home,” she says. “I just don’t have the heart to get rid of those big tomato worms.”