Thank you so much to everyone who came, volunteered, spoke or facilitated a discussion group for helping to make our first conference such a great success!! We’re all looking forward to next year already.

The Urban Librarian’s Conference focuses specifically on the issues of the working librarian in the city.
“Living in Interesting Times” the theme of the first Urban Librarian’s Conference is taken from the apocryphal Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”. The curse implied chaos and the difficulties of living through times of change. This theme has been flipped here as the conference seeks to embrace all of the potential inherent in change. These are indeed very interesting times for libraries and librarianship and an incredible amount of innovative work is happening in city libraries all across America.

The Urban Librarian’s Conference will differ from other library conferences in numerous ways. Instead of being based on ALA Divisions or on geographic location this conference will focus on serving populations in a type of community (the city). Working urban librarians often find themselves saying “well that is great but it will never work in MY library”. This conference will only offer ideas that would work in an urban library. Practice will be paired with the practical, the ideas and concepts discussed will be tied to practical courses of action that working information professionals can use for the benefit of their patrons and institutions.

Urban Librarians Unite is a small not for profit organization based out of New York City. Its mandate is to promote urban libraries and librarianship, to support advances in Library Science in urban areas, and to defend any library at risk. ULU was founded with this kind of scholarship and conversations in mind. The organization plans on making the Urban Librarian’s Conference an annual event with luminaries in urban librarianship coming together to swap ideas and develop new resources for our colleagues and patrons.