An interview with Aiga Volkova, library manager, Latvia
Already doing it — one topic at a time
Aiga Volkova manages a library where sustainability is not a strategic framework — it is a daily presence woven into services and community engagement. The library organises self-education lectures on sustainable development for local residents, provides information on waste sorting and healthy lifestyles, and treats community involvement not as an add-on but as central to its mission.
When the ESG acronym was introduced, it was unfamiliar. But the content — environmental responsibility, social inclusion, transparent governance — was immediately recognisable. This pattern is consistent across the ESG4GLAM research: GLAM professionals are frequently doing ESG work without the label, and the label itself can feel distant from daily reality even when the substance is close.
Volkova’s library participates in various EU projects and uses them as its primary vehicle for structured ESG engagement. Internal training, courses, and seminars also play a role. But her clearest conviction is that the formats which actually move people are the ones that are relational and applied — mentoring and practical training above all.
Social and governance first, environment still catching up
Of the three ESG dimensions, Volkova identifies social and governance as the most developed in her context. The library’s core work — equitable access to information, inclusive services, community programming — is inherently social. Governance is also relatively present, shaped by institutional structures and the engagement of library leadership.
The environmental dimension is the one where she sees the most ground to cover. Her diagnosis is practical rather than critical: environmental sustainability requires substantial work and financial resources. It is not that the will is absent. It is that the infrastructure — budget, capacity, time — has not yet been built to match the intention.
“The social dimension and governance are the most developed. The environmental dimension is less developed, as its development requires substantial work and financial resources.”
This resource dependency on the environmental dimension is a recurrent finding in the ESG4GLAM research. It points to a structural asymmetry: social sustainability is embedded in the library’s mission and therefore costs little additional effort to pursue; environmental sustainability requires new infrastructure, new measurement systems, and new procurement choices that carry a cost.
The gap is in practical skills, not in values
When asked where the most significant competency gaps lie, Volkova’s answer is unambiguous: the operational level, and specifically practical skills. This is not a question of awareness or motivation. The values are present. The knowledge of why ESG matters is present. What is missing is the how.
She illustrates the gap with a precise and widely recognisable observation: people who start training programmes tend to drop out when they do not immediately see the results of their efforts. The absence of a mentor, the lack of a clearly defined goal, the difficulty of connecting abstract content to a concrete Tuesday morning decision — these are the points where ESG competency development fails in practice.
“Often, a clear goal is not defined, and people who start training programs tend to drop out if they do not immediately see the results of their efforts. In some cases, there is also a lack of sufficient explanation or the presence of a mentor.”
This is a design challenge as much as a content challenge. Training that does not produce visible short-term outcomes will not hold the attention of staff who are already stretched across multiple responsibilities. The implication for ESG4GLAM is clear: any training or toolkit must be structured around quick wins that are visible, attributable, and connected to work people already do.
Management buy-in is the multiplier
On governance and institutional conditions, Volkova is equally direct. The single factor that most determines whether ESG moves or stalls in an organisation is leadership engagement.
“The greater the interest and involvement of management, the more emphasis will be placed on a more effective and faster implementation of ESG, as this would lead to more consideration of budget allocation for this purpose.”
This is not a novel observation, but it is one that deserves emphasis because it has direct implications for how ESG4GLAM tools are designed and deployed. If the primary audience is frontline staff, but the structural enabler is management, then effective ESG capacity building must address both levels. Tools that help staff make the case for ESG to their managers are as important as tools that build staff ESG skills directly.
Budget constraints and workload pressure are also named as significant barriers. These are not individual failings — they are structural conditions that affect most small and medium-sized GLAM organisations across Europe. The insight here is that ESG integration will only be sustained where leadership has decided it matters enough to protect the time and resources needed to pursue it.
Validation through practice, aligned to European frameworks
On the question of how ESG competencies should be recognised and validated, Volkova favours an evidence-based, practice-rooted approach. The most credible form of validation, in her view, is demonstrated through real project work: improving accessibility, implementing inclusive services, carrying out environmentally responsible solutions. Not a certificate earned in a training room, but a record of what was actually changed.She also places significant weight on alignment with European frameworks — specifically the European Qualifications Framework (EQF). The reasoning is strategic: integration with European policy helps align local initiatives with broader strategies for sustainability, inclusion, and governance. For small organisations in countries where ESG funding and policy attention are still developing, European-level recognition is a lever for domestic legitimacy.
What ESG4GLAM must deliver
Volkova’s recommendations for the project are specific and practical:
- Mindset change support — tools to help management and staff understand the concrete benefits of ESG integration, not just its ethical importance
- Clear guidelines and standardised tools — methods and indicators that can be applied without significant additional infrastructure
- Practical experience and project-based validation — mechanisms to demonstrate that competencies are being applied in real work
- Knowledge exchange — structured opportunities to learn from other institutions, including international partners
- Accessible content for small organisations — she specifically names the desire to understand how sustainability development works in a small organisation, a perspective often absent from frameworks designed around large institutions
This last point is worth underscoring. The ESG4GLAM research consistently shows that small and medium-sized GLAM organisations — which make up the large majority of the sector across Europe — are often poorly served by tools designed with larger institutions in mind. Volkova’s experience as a library manager in Latvia is a direct reminder that scalability and proportionality are not optional features of a successful competency framework. They are the conditions of its usefulness.
“New knowledge always provides opportunities for growth. I would like to understand how sustainability development is implemented in a small organisation.”
This article was produced with the assistance of generative AI tools. The interview transcript was prepared by a third party and may itself have involved AI-assisted processing. All factual content has been verified against the original transcript.