Libraries as Agents of Climate Change Literacy

Abstract

Climate change literacy can be defined as one’s ability to find, understand, and use information and services to make decisions about the environment. In today’s knowledge driven economy, citizens face many more challenges navigating the current information landscape than in the past, emphasizing the need to be information literate. For decades librarians have been uniquely positioned to serve the citizens from all age and educational backgrounds. Now it is an opportune time for libraries to communicate the climate change information produced by governmental and nonprofit agencies to ordinary citizens. This paper will investigate the impact that libraries can have on citizens’ climate change literacy by drawing upon two analytical frameworks: leverage points and environmental health literacy.