To read more about TinyCat’s Library of the Month feature, visit the TinyCat Post archive here.

TinyCat’s October Library of the Month looks at a New Zealand-based organization working to make a sustainable lifestyle easy for anyone. The Sustainability Trust’s Volunteer Librarian Marion Llenart was kind enough to field my questions this month:

Who are you, and what is your mission—your “raison d’être”?

The Sustainability Trust is a social enterprise that believes sustainable living should be an available option for us all. With a focus on energy efficiency the Trust helps those economically and socially disadvantaged in our community to use energy efficiently in their houses and flats and create healthy homes. The library provides information that helps people reduce their impact on the environment.

Tell us some interesting things about how you support your community.

Our library has books and information which support our sustainable living community programmes such as learning how to compost and making garden containers from pallets, making cleaning products from natural products, making natural face products, and recycling.

What are some of your favorite items in your collection?

My favourite books include The Natural Home by Wendyl Nissen, which gives practical advice on sustainable living such as making a garden and cooking healthy food. Creating Cohousing by Kathryn McCamant is another favourite as this is a way of the future for those who like to live in sustainable communities. Lastly, Living Big in a Tiny House by Bryce Langston provides another alternative way of living sustainably, and this book gives beautiful examples of very small homey spaces.

What’s a particular challenge your library experiences?

The ongoing challenge for the library is always promotion and making sure people know we have all these resources and information on sustainability readily available and free of charge. As a small library we don’t have a large acquisitions budget so every new item needs careful research.

What is your favorite thing about TinyCat, and what’s something you’d love to see implemented/developed?

TinyCat has provided an online portal to the library. As well as providing access to physical resources, it allows promotion of online resources including films and websites. It has enabled me to promote the library’s Wiki, giving information on second hand shops, places to dispose of waste sustainably and local climate change organisations. It would be great to have the library Wiki developed so it can enable feedback, suggestions and discussion from library users.

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Want to learn more about The Sustainability Trust? Visit their website at https://sustaintrust.org.nz/our-story and check out their TinyCat collection here.

To read up on TinyCat’s previous Libraries of the Month, visit the TinyCat Post archive here.

Calling all TinyCat libraries: become TinyCat’s next Library of the Month—just send us a Tweet @TinyCat_lib or email Kristi at kristi@librarything.com.

Labels: libraries, Library of the Month, TinyCat