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Try some of these green tricks and techniques! Please visit the Document Sharing and Student Assistants pages for information
about paperless forms of communication.
Do you have a green circulation suggestion? Please contact Sarah or Cindy so that we can post your idea!
 Issue eco-friendly library cards.
The San Francisco Public Library is now promoting biodegradable cards made from corn. Read the press release for more information: http://sfpl.org/green/. Provide tote bags.
Many libraries are already selling reusable canvas bags for nominal fees.
(A common price is $1.00 per bag.)
Be sure to market your library by screening your logo onto the totes' sides!
Direct patrons to MyAccount options.
Eliminate your receipt printers and encourage students and staff to check the status
of their items online.
Email overdue notices.
Forget snail mail! Send friendly warnings and overdue reminders by email, or have
your student assistants call the offending patrons.
Charge for printing.
Even a small per-page fee will discourage students from printing excessively.
Be clever but cautious with Kindles?
Several colleges have made headlines in recent months for their experiments with
various e-book readers.
The National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind are suing six institutions of higher learning for using the Kindle DX as a means of distributing e-textbooks to students. Although the Kindle DX includes text-to-speech technology that can read text aloud, the DX menus are not accessible to the blind; so blind students cannot purchase books from the Kindle store, select books to read, activate the text-to-speech feature, or use the advanced reading functions, which include personal bookmarks, notes, and web access. (Visit the NFB site to read the entire press release: http://www.nfb.org/nfb/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=449.) Northwest Missouri State University just finished a similar year-long pilot program that involved the distribution of e-textbooks on
Sony Readers. For a summary of student and professor reactions, read Jeffrey Young's
"6 Lessons One Campus Learned About E-Textbooks" in the June 12th, 2009, edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Brigham Young University's library recently suspended a new book-on-demand program run by the interlibrary loan department.
When a faculty member requested a book that the library didn't own, ILL staff downloaded the Amazon e-book version onto one of
nine Kindles available for loan. The library temporarily discontinued the program because Amazon had given verbal consent but not
written permission. (Read the entire article in the local paper:
Kindle Conclusion: Keep accessibility issues and copyright concerns in mind when experimenting with uses for e-book readers!
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