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It isn't often that a publisher's letter elicits a flood of response but it seems that more of us are weighing practical choices in terms of sustainability, and the transition from print to e-books and online databases raises new and challenging questions for libraries and for publishers. A few weeks ago I wrote to our customers and colleagues to tell them that the first volume of the Encyclopedia of Sustainability, entitled The Spirit of Sustainability and a project of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University, was at the printers and quickly heard from Mary Krautter, who is Head of Reference and Instructional Services at the Jackson Library, University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She asked about plans to make the ten volumes of the Encyclopedia of Sustainability available online, "It does seem odd to offer a set like this only in paper - goes against the 'spirit of sustainability.'"
In fact, the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability will be available electronically as well as in print. But even expert advisors to the project have assumed that publishing on paper would be the more sustainable approach. I can't think of an issue where general awareness is more out of out of balance with its real-world impact than the choices we make about using computers and online services. There is no simple answer, as you'll see, but the vital first step is to get over the misconception that digital publishing is inherently better for the environment than publishing on paper.
For years I've felt that the environmental impact of publishing needed much more attention, especially after my own book The Armchair Environmentalist (MQ Publications 2004) was one of the first books to be published in the UK on 100% recycled paper. "At last!" I thought, remembering that I'd been asked about this all the way back in 1989 when my first book, Home Ecology, was published in London. It was in London, too, that my education about data centres really took off. I was asked to chair the first Green Data Centres Conference in July 2008 and I learned what a myth it was that online publishing was inevitably a better, less carbon- and resource-intensive option.
I learned just what a huge environmental challenge is posed by our increasing dependence on online and mobile communications, shopping, and publishing. I found out that computer networks use as much energy as the global aviation industry and are on a much faster growth trajectory. I learned that keeping anything or anyone online makes a continuous contribution to global warming (unless, of course, your systems are entirely powered by renewables).
I've learned more as we worked with experts around the world on Volume 2, The Business of Sustainability (which will be published in January). E-waste is a problem that we're far from solving because of the short life of technology products - and they have not been designed, yet, for anything close to efficient reuse or remanufacturing. It's not just the energy we use but the energy we waste. "Data centre power and cooling infrastructure worldwide wastes more than 60,000,000 megawatt-hours per year of electricity. This represents an enormous financial burden on industry and is a significant public policy environmental issue," according to a recent report. The vast amounts of water required to cool today's data centres is another issue of great concern to environmental analysts.
Mary Krautter responded, "Of course sustainability is really not the only reason that we're avoiding paper reference works, although it's a factor . . . I'm still a big fan of paper volumes for longer works that can be checked out and studied at leisure, but for reference sets which we typically make building use only with relatively brief articles, this model just isn't working for us anymore. As a very minor example, our music librarian in another branch library is a member of our sustainability/green librarian group - will she be more likely to use articles from this set if she has to walk over to the main library? Or if she can access from her desktop?"
Circulating this discussion further, I heard from scholars and environmentalists as well as librarians. Oliver Rackham OBE, of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, authority on the British countryside, who recently wrote on 'Trees in World History' for Berkshire's second edition of the Encyclopedia of World History (McNeill et al, 2005/2010), responded with several points and concluded, "The problems are complex, not least because of the very wide variations in time-scale. It is time someone tried to analyse them, on the lines maybe of the Americans who investigated 'built-in obsolescence' as a factor driving the car industry in the 1960s. None of the reviews of computers that I have seen pays much attention to reliability or longevity."
Donna Halper, professor of communications at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, brought up the digital divide, "I think some of my colleagues who want everything online (whether to save a tree or because it's faster and easier) need to keep in mind that while most of us have all sorts of laptops and Netbooks and Kindles, along with a multitude of databases, not everyone shares our good fortune . . . In the ideal universe, students wouldn't be denied access to research just because their school can't afford the best databases . . . Thus, I am delighted that you are publishing this and all your reference volumes in BOTH an online and a hard copy version." A teacher in Hawaii wrote, "Wow! I never thought about this aspect of e-publishing, but my eyes are open now!" I even had a thank-you note from the office of one of the world's leading environmentalists. (These colleagues have kindly given me permission to share their comments.)
Here's what we are doing. First, we participate in the Green Press Initiative, which saved, with our printing of the 5-volume Berkshire Encyclopedia of China in May 2009, 138 trees (40' tall and 6-8" diameter), 117 million BTUs of total energy, 12,219 pounds of greenhouse gases, 50,717 gallons of wastewater, and 6,513 pounds of solid waste. Second, our publishing programme is increasingly geared to online usability, with separate PDFs for all articles, succinct abstracts, and scheduled updating. And we are not only making our own commitment to sustainable publishing but working with other companies and with universities and school to increase awareness of the many opportunities that exist to make a difference and improve performance.
Any questions you have for online aggregators and for print publishers, are welcome, and any information you have about efforts in your library system or institution to reduce the energy and resource use of computers and data centres would be helpful to us. We will take this information to Greenpeace (who have just started a Cool IT Challenge), to the US Green Print Initiative (with whom we work) and to other organisations working on e-waste and paper issues. We'll also take them directly to Google, Microsoft, and IBM. Berkshire works with people at these companies, and is in fact developing a pilot project with IBM related to sustainability research and data sources.
Comments can be posted at the Berkshire blog.
Karen Christensen is founder & CEO of Berkshire Publishing Group, author of Home Ecology, Eco Living, and The Armchair Environmentalist
Phone: +1 413 528 0206
email: karen@berkshirepublishing.com
Skype: karen_christensen
Blog: www.berkshirepublishing.com/blog
Twitter: www.twitter.com/karenchristenze
Berkshire's commitment to sustainable publishing (both in print and online):
- We will provide eco-audits for our print publications and comparable data from our digital partners as it becomes available
- We will help libraries recycle print sets if they decide to move to a digital edition by connecting them to libraries in need
- We will encourage our digital publishing partners (Gale, Ebsco, Dawson, MyiLibrary, NetLibrary, Exact Editions, Stanza, and others) to implement sustainability strategies
- We will provide information about how libraries can reduce their carbon footprint
- We will find new ways to contribute to green/sustainable library initiatives
- We will share best practices and be honest about our own successes and failures
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