The North Carolina Public Library Directors Association (NCPLDA) in collaboration with the State Library of North Carolina has announced the North Carolina Green Libraries Project. The purpose of the project is to advocate and support environmentally responsible program and management practices in all North Carolina Public Libraries.

At their spring meeting, NCPLDA members committed themselves to the project and will ask every public library director in North Carolina to examine their current building management practices, in-house food services, recycling efforts, and energy consumption. They will be asked to commit to a long-term effort to make every library in the state as environmentally friendly as possible beginning with local planning for all libraries. 

Mark Pumphrey, President of the NCPLDA says: “Every community cannot be as fortunate as Durham County with their LEED certified buildings, but all public library directors can strive to make their existing buildings as energy efficient and environmentally friendly as possible.” Some libraries are in counties such as Cumberland in which there are guidelines for green business certification which Director Jody Risacher has met. “We are encouraging all directors in such counties to commit themselves to meeting those local guidelines, and if there are none, to take a leadership role in creating them.” said President Pumphrey.

A North Carolina Green Library Task Force has been established within NCPLDA which has developed a survey to determine what NC libraries are doing to date. The team is also developing a “going green” checklist for libraries that are in counties that do not have local guidelines and creating a website and using a wiki to share information among all the state’s library directors.

“We are proud to be a part of this initiative,” said State Librarian Mary Boone, “and we believe that North Carolina can be a model for other states as our professional community takes on this project. Too often we wait until there is a large grant or other big pot of funds to begin a project. We are saying that the goal is too important to wait for some major infusion of dollars; instead, we will do what we can with the resources that we have available.” 

The website, wiki, and additional information will be available along with a preliminary report on 22 April 2009: Earth Day on the NCPLDA website,