A sustainable community uses its resources to meet current needs while ensuring that adequate resources are available for future generations. It involves all its citizens in an integrated, long-term planning process to protect the environment, expand economic opportunities, and meet social needs. Economy is the management and use of resources to meet household and community needs. Ecology is the pattern of relationships between living things and their environment. We all know our shoe size.
Equity is fairness.
Ideally everyone in a community shares in its well-being. The three E s economy, ecology, and equity provide a framework for libraries and their communities to explore and anticipate how the choices they make today affect tomorrow. Many libraries have worked actively to improve and sustain their communities with special projects, new collections and services, and major community initiatives. Even though many library activities have not been defined as part of the sustainable community movement, they meet the above definition. The library s service mission clearly supports this aspect of community involvement.