By: Corey Farrenkopf, Eastham Public Library & Gabrielle Griffis, Assistant Youth Services Librarian, Brewster Ladies' Library
2022 marked the fourth exciting year of partnership between libraries and Communities Responding to Extreme Weather (CREW) for Climate Preparedness Week. Climate Prep Week runs the last week in September and is a time dedicated to informing patrons and communities about extreme weather, environmental education, sustainable alternatives, and other related green topics. This year’s theme was The Planet’s Health and Yours: Facing the Invisible Impacts of Climate Change. Many libraries focused on an array of interpretations on this theme, encompassing everything from mental health, the risks of dehydration, heating/cooling concerns, and the effects climate change has on our native flora and fauna. Over fifty libraries ran programs for Climate Prep Week this year. We wanted to take a few minutes to share with you some of the insightful and inspiring programs libraries held across the country, in addition to the central programs hosted by CREW and the Massachusetts Library System. Hopefully, you find these inspiring and might consider joining us next year for Climate Prep Week!
Fourteen libraries in the CLAMS network on Cape Cod and the Islands partnered with the Cape Cod Climate Change Collaborative to offer a webinar on this year’s theme with the Climate Change Collaborative’s executive director Richard Delaney and vice president, Fran Schofield. Delaney covered local, national, and international aspects of the impacts of climate change. The talk included solutions to the climate crisis as well as an interactive question and answer session at the end.
Over at Eastham Library, Marianne Sinopoli, Eastham’s Outreach Librarian, hosted a community forum on youth mental health with a particular focus on suicide awareness and prevention. She brought in trained mental health providers along with spokespeople from the nonprofit, Sharing Kindness, to speak on the matter and to facilitate a discussion between concerned members of the community, as well as offering resources to those in need. A component to the forum was addressing climate dread in teens. Eastham also created a StoryWalk focused on Wellness for younger readers with the book Being A Dog: a Tail of Mindfulness by Maria Gianferrari and Pete Oswald.
Lynnfield Public Library was able to bring the Caterpillar Lab to their library for some interactive and exciting family education in partnership with Lynnfield’s Tree Committee. Abigail Porter, the library’s Director, reported that:
“Over 200 people attended and it was a lot of fun. The event consisted of open air displays of many caterpillars on local plants and slides and videos for more up close views. Three Caterpillar Lab experts were on hand to answer questions. It was fascinating and we were wowed by the turnout…”
Millie Gonzalez, Library Dean at the Henry Whitmore Library at Framingham State, shared with us an article their student newspaper published about the Sea Level Rise forum they hosted after viewing CREW’s central event dealing with the topic.
Racine Oxtoby, the Outreach Coordinator for Wellfleet Library, hosted an event focused on Ocean Sunfish and the effects climate change played on their population. She said:
“On September 26 we hosted Carol “Krill” Carson from New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance (NECWA). The focus of her talk was Ocean Sunfish and Climate Change. She talked about how the numbers of sunfish strandings in Cape Cod – and especially Wellfleet Harbor – have increased dramatically in the last ten years. Cape Cod Bay acts as a natural hook to corral sunfish and other migrating sea creatures, and Wellfleet Harbor is a perfect – albeit unintentional – trap for these creatures. Warming waters means that sunfish prey like jellyfish are staying in our waters longer, which cause sunfish to feed longer and become trapped when the tide goes out. Krill brought along artifacts like sunfish bones and skin and also provided information on how NECWA can be contacted when a stranded sunfish is spotted.”
One of our own Blue Marble Librarians, Reni Cunningham, Reference Librarian at Concord Free Public Library, had this two say about the programs she arranged for CPW:
“I put together two programs this year; Wildfires in Massachusetts: A Hot Topic and Propagate Local, Native Pollinator Plants Across Concord! We also did the Climate Ribbon Project and had a week long interactive Tick Awareness Display . Our branch library had additional programs: Fowler Afoot focused on climate, Planting Pollinators, Seed Saving with Codman Farms, and they had a Climate Ribbon Project set up too.
I had hoped for greater attendance, but the collaborations were excellent and we can build on them in the future. For Wildfires, we had a few people attend in person, and another 11 on Zoom. It was held the week before on the 22nd and it was a very rainy day, which may have impacted attendance - we had about 18 people register. The Fire Chief and Assistant Fire Chief did a fantastic job and the video is well worth viewing. Here are links to the Wildfires calendar entry and the video recording.” 
The Pioneer Valley Library Collaborative (PVLC) went live with its Climate Prep Week website, thanks in large part to the efforts of Benjamin Kalish of Forbes Public Library in Northampton, MA. The site will be used to promote regional PVLC Climate Prep Week offerings, such as Westhampton Public Library's Art & Music for Climate Healing program with Resilient Community Arts and local musicians and climate activists this morning in spite of the gloomy weather.
Julia E Kress, Senior Electronic Resource Assistant at Fondren Library (housed at Rice University, had this to say about the co-sponsored event she hosted with CREW, the Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library and the Rice University Fondren Library Green Team:
“Here is the link to the video from our event The Challenges of Communicating Climate Risk. As part of Climate Preparedness Week 2022, Fondren Library's Green Team and the Leventhal Map & Education Center presented a conversation about the challenges of communicating climate risks and impacts in two different geographic contexts. Rice professor and Houston-based author Lacy M. Johnson discussed her new book, More City Than Water: A Houston Flood Atlas, and the process of working with graphic designers to produce maps that document Hurricane Harvey’s impact on Houston. Based in Boston, Zoe Davis works for the City of Boston as a Climate Resilience Project Manager on the Climate Ready Boston team, which informs local climate planning and helps residents visualize and prepare for the impacts of future climate risks. The conversation explored what’s at stake when communicating about climate change, whether as a historical record of a past disaster or as part of future-focused public policy.”
Colin Battis, CREW's Fellow for this year's Climate Prep Week, had this to say about the various central events CREW hosted:
“We have recordings of three of our events up on YouTube! The first two were online events, the third was a hybrid event."
We are so thankful for everyone who participated and worked together to get this important work out there in front of patrons. To learn more about how you can get involved next year, visit CREW’s website. We hope to see you there (in person or digitally) in 2023!
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