Extremely Important Roles for Librarians Providing Extremely Important STEM Data and Information for Climatic Changes (Invited Presentation)

We live in a greenhouse gas-constrained world. Challenges for Librarians in Support of President Barack Obama's Climate Action Plan, issued earlier this year, provide tremendous opportunities for the library community at large to deliver a solid STE3M3 (scientific, technical, engineering/environmental/economic, mathematics/medicine/management) perspective for understanding the causes and consequences, implications, issues, and solutions needed to avert a global environmental crisis. President Obama's Climate Action Plan includes a call for "climate preparedness tools and information needed by state, local, and private-sector leaders through a centralized "toolkit" and a new Climate Data Initiative." Libraries will play critical roles in identifying appropriate resources, data-finding tools, literature and other resources; educational strategies and curricular support resources for children (middle through high school), college, and the various stakeholder groups populated by adults from many walks of life with many differing societal and cultural perspectives; and developing the means for addressing the information needs of those groups and individuals. This presentation examines the means by which librarians can effective provide high-quality, subject-specific, and timely access to the STEM resources to accomplish this. These librarian-provided efforts, initiatives, resources, and expertise give members of the community at-large (stakeholders involved in active community engagement on these issues) a time-tested, highly trusted, and legitimate means for providing the data and information resources and tools that allow for formulating the policies and solutions related to global climate change from individual to national to international levels so that we can live more securely in a world not constrained by greenhouse gases.