New York may be heading into winter but things are looking pretty green here at MSK! Last month Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center was included in Becker’s Hospital Review list of the 50 Greenest Hospitals in America.  We’re also a Practice Greenhealth Top 25 Environmental Excellence Award honoree for 2015 and a member of Practice Greenhealth’s Greening the OR, Healthy Food, Climate and Green Building Circles of Excellence. That’s a lot of honors!

We’ve all heard the the R’s of being green; Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.  Hospitals have a unique challenge to creating a sustainability program. Due to the nature of healthcare, there are a lot of items we just can’t reuse or recycle in order to do our part for the planet. Certain tools must be single use and some electronic devices need to be on 24 hours a day.  We’ve had to find the places where we can make a changes without sacrificing our high quality services.  MSK is increasing the efficiency of heating and lighting, serving local produce in the cafeteria, and reducing waste. Our new facilities are built with an eye on the LEED certification from the US Green Building Council.  Here at the library we are working on revamping our printing system to reduce accidental and unwanted print jobs. Continue reading →

After years of claims that eBooks would kill the publishing industry, some media sources are reporting a new, more complex picture.  According to reports this week, eBook sales are slipping as more and more readers turn back to print.  This is only a current trend, but it speaks volumes of those who, 5 years ago, were getting rid of print collections in libraries and putting all their eggs in the digital-only basket.

[Image by WikiMediaCommons user Maximilian Schönherr]

I have a Kindle.  It’s great for one-handed reading on my morning commute (especially the 800+ page tomes that are popular these days), bringing multiple books on a trip, or diving right into a sequel the moment a book is finished. Still, I can’t help but be annoyed by some limitations.  Flipping back a few pages can be tricky and cause the machine to crash; maps, family trees and pictures in books are reduced to fuzzy illegible space-holders.  Do the pros outweigh the cons?  The answer is: only sometimes.  I still love the tactile book.  The smell, the feel of pages turning under my hand, that sense of satisfaction when you get to the end of the book.  Kindles can tell you how far you are through the eBook file, but the feeling is different. Continue reading →