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Paper short abstract:

The Anthropocene presents a unique challenge around collecting and presenting 'future history' in a rapidly changing world. We explore how libraries and museums can intersect with environmental history, emphasizing the importance of futurist thinking and digital strategies.

Paper long abstract:

Libraries and museums are not just repositories of the past; they are curators of future histories. While the Anthropocene epoch illustrates the unprecedented impact of human activity on the Earth, it also urges us to rethink our approach to collecting, preserving, and interpreting information about our planet. Linda Hall Library and the Valais Nature Museum are making a start on this endeavor, each employing unique and similar strategies to engage the public and scholars in conversations about climate change, human-environment interactions, and our collective future.

A key focus of this paper is the importance of futurist thinking in library and object collections, for instance in the acquisition of monographs that address climate change scenarios, technology's role in environmental solutions, and policy implications. Futurist thinking does not only prepare us for the outcomes but offers different narrative pathways that society could follow.

Digital strategies, including digitization of archives, online exhibitions, and interactive databases, are becoming indispensable tools for preserving 'living' histories. Linda Hall Library, known for its extensive collection of science and technology materials, employs advanced digital archiving methods to provide wide accessibility. The Nature Museum Valais has developed an original collection of the Anthropocene. Both institutions use collaborative exhibitions to tell the story of the region's environmental history.

The findings presented here aim to foster collaborations between librarians, museologists and environmental historians, ensuring that we not only preserve our past but also empower our future.

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Paper short abstract:

This slightly "meta" analysis uses knowledge repositories today to learn how similar institutions were used in the past to scale-up widespread cultural change. Today's digital tools allow us to better piece together complex processes of the past to uncover how they could be so effective.

Paper long abstract:

While knowledge repositories might seem static, their histories can reveal less confining associations. Focusing on a nineteenth century case-study, I will illustrate how the director of the botanical gardens and museum in Christiania (today's Oslo) worked to strengthen botanical and horticultural knowledge in various ways to affect change in multiple levels of the Norwegian population. Professor Frederik Christian Schübeler believed that existing knowledge should actively empower people to become more self-sufficient to protect themselves for times of political or climate-induced famine. Though our current aspirations may be different, we can learn a lot from Schübeler's processes to understand how knowledge institutions or repositories can build/erect/facilitate projects that successfully scale up public knowledge and engagement with for example plants and nature. Today, the secrets of Schübeler's success with museums/botanical gardens lies in libraries and archives along with potentially very interesting transdisciplinary information he gathered about plants. In this talk, I will demonstrate how the digital tools of today have allowed me to further explore both the nuance and widescale impact of Schübeler's influence. The digitalization of books and archives opens the field for new methods and rates of exploring and understanding familiar histories and allow for new insights. The power of this accessibility can also be reflected in the opportunities that Schübeler's work of opening and activating collections provided for the public in the latter half of the nineteenth century. By fostering new ways of applying knowledge, I argue that knowledge repositories can spearhead widespread change in a wider culture.

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Paper short abstract:

For long periods of time, the history of the environment has been the history of humans. due to the special conditions of the Iranian plateau, Iranians have unique ways of living in this net climate, and tried to write/publish the ways of preserving their lives in the form of various books.

Paper long abstract:

Until the agricultural revolution, the history of the environment was the history of humanity. in time whenever man has been able to establish a better relationship with environment, the survival of them has been ensured easer. Throughout history, different peoples have used different ways to coexist with nature. Methods of coexistence with nature were written down after time and mankind began to teach them to their children. What is now available as heritage in historical books is a part of his effort to preserve life by preserving knowledge and passing it on to the next generation. Due to the special conditions of the Iranian plateau, Iranians have unique ways of living in this area, and they have tried to write about their knowledge in the form of various books. One of the books in which has specially talked about the knowledge of agriculture and ways of working with the environment among Iranians, is the book Marafat Falahat/Agricultural Knowledge is attributed to Abdullah Birjandi (934AH/1528), prominent mathematician of 16th century. Birjandi has written about important topics about introducing the climate, different kinds of legumes, grains, trees, pest and diseases managements, etc. The present article refers to the book chapters with special reference to the method of historical criticism. Finaly, reviewing the methods of communication of the predecessors with the environment can be a useful step in better understanding the history of the environment. Because the path of the future will be better traveled by looking in the mirror of the past.

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Paper short abstract:

Libraries play a critical role in promoting environmental awareness and sustainability by preserving and disseminating information about environmental history. This paper explores the intersection between environmental history and librarianship.

Paper long abstract:

"The Green Archive: Harnessing the Power of Environmental History and Librarianship to Build a Sustainable Future" is a research paper that explores the potential of merging the fields of environmental history and librarianship to promote sustainability. The paper argues that environmental history and librarianship share a common goal of preserving and organizing information for future generations, and that this commonality can be harnessed to promote sustainability.

The paper examine the current state of the environment and the urgent need for sustainable practices. It then discusses the role of archives in preserving and disseminating information, and how this can contribute to a sustainable future. The paper further explores the potential for collaboration between environmental historians and librarians. The authors suggest that librarians can assist environmental historians in identifying and preserving important historical documents related to the environment. Additionally, librarians can help make this information accessible to a wider audience, including policymakers and the general public.

The paper highlights the importance of preserving and disseminating environmental information, and suggests practical ways in which archives can become more sustainable. Ultimately, the paper offers a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion around environmental sustainability and the role of information in promoting a sustainable future.

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Paper short abstract:

Switzerland has had no oil wells or colonies on its own, but many institutions hold archival material giving insights into its entanglements during the emergence of a global petroleumscape (Carola Hein, 2022). What role do these heritage institutions play today?

Paper long abstract:

From 1900 onwards, oil industry was in need of geologically trained staff to explore undergrounds for future oil drilling spaces. Many Swiss geologists were seen to be suitable for this task, having had practical work experience in the Swiss alps. They were sent to promising oil areas all over the world and had to adapt within the colonial and imperial setting of international oil companies. Being in a constant exchange with friends, families and professional colleagues, a flow of ideas, images and (cultural) things emerged between Switzerland and petrostates worldwide. Results were huge ethnographic, geological and photographic collections, which we find today in Swiss heritage institutions like libraries, archives and museums.

Taking the example of the Museum der Kulturen Basel, I will show, how the emergence of the ethnographic collection was linked to job opportunities within the petroleum industry. In current provenance research debates about such collections, questions about the parallelism of resource extraction and collection building in western museums haven’t received consideration so far. Following an actor-based research approach, I will analyze historical material stored at the Museum der Kulturen Basel and outline its merits for both: provenance research and environmental history approaches. I will argue that we must carefully rethink about our holdings in libraries, archives, and museums and that we often face ‹dirty data legacies› (Hannah Turner, 2020), especially in western ethnographic collections.

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Paper short abstract:

Climate Stories Project (CSP) helps people tell their own personal climate change stories and conduct climate story interviews within their communities. This paper delves into how CSP’s community-based approach to climate change can be used in collaboration with cultural heritage institutions.

Paper long abstract:

The climate crisis is intersectional, encompassing contemporary and historic economic, scientific, and social issues. Climate Stories Project (CSP) is an innovative project focused on helping people tell their own and others’ climate change stories, recording individual thoughts, feelings, and experiences along with the disproportionate impact of the global phenomenon. Utilizing a multi-part workshop format, CSP trains participants in community-based storytelling and oral history methods, enabling them to draft their own personal climate story and conduct climate change interviews within their communities. Archives, libraries, and other cultural heritage institutions are uniquely situated within their communities to preserve and promote local knowledge of the climate crisis and to act as spaces where CSP workshops (both in-person and virtual) can offer new skills for climate change communication.

Academic and public librarians and their patrons have participated in numerous CSP workshops over the past three years. This represents the interest for novel ways to approach the climate crisis which take into consideration the mandate of cultural heritage institutions to serve their user base and to preserve, protect, and provide access to knowledge, including about the climate crisis. This paper will delve into how CSP’s personal and community-based approach to climate change makes it an ideal method to use in collaboration with local heritage organizations.

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Paper short abstract:

AI is an explosive, exciting, interactive and emerging technology. The opportunities are endless for those trained in artificial intelligence and its subareas such as deep learning and machine learning, drones, robots, driverless vehicles, big data and related AI technologies.

Paper long abstract:

AI is an explosive, exciting, interactive and emerging technology that drives robotics, drones, driverless vehicles, big data and other technologies. It demands attention from professional of all fields due to its potential to displace or elevate workforce based on their low skilled or high skilled respectively. The opportunities are endless for those trained in artificial intelligence and its subareas such as deep learning and machine learning, drones, robots, driverless vehicles, big data and related AI technologies. Librarians with skills in these areas will enjoy tremendous wealth-building, financially lucrative opportunities whereas those who will be displaced will have tremendous challenge to find employment at the levels that they enjoyed in the past. This study investigates those skills that equips academics librarians to function effectively in AI age Questionnaire will be sent through Google Form to collect data from the academic librarians across the six geo-political Zone of the country. The data collected will be analyzed using SPSS software.