Take Environmental Responsiblity for Your Reading (And a Great Story About "The Unknownable Bottom Line")

Eco-libris is a site where you can pay to have one tree planted for every book that you've read (or bought or whatever “balance” you want to create.)  The cost is just under $1 per book – a small price to pay (er, not that I will be anytime soon but the concept has lots of appeal anyhow.  Er, maybe after Christmas!) 

Here's an interesting exercise – try to imagine the pitch that you would have to make to your board to justify spending an additional $10 000 or $20 000 or whatever to buy into this program for every book your library purchases.  This is one of those weird unmeasurables we often come across where's it's impossible to determine what a fixed expenditure brings back to your organization over time via expanded and continued good will. 

That's probably the tack I'd try to take – that spending this money might result in increased good will which leads to increased usage which leads to all manner of good things.  But if I'm a board member, my counter argument is that the library is already very environmentally friendly by virtue of the fact that it allows a single purchased book to be used by dozens of people over its lifetime.  As I said, an interesting question…