Urban Libraries section 2015-16 report

The Urban Libraries section met monthly during the 2015-16 year, although we followed a few traditions in which we stray from the monthly schedule as follows:

• November and December meetings are combined into a November meeting
• No meeting was scheduled during the month of the NJLA Annual Conference
• July is taken as a recess, so all end of year business is conducted and completed in the June meeting.

In order to accommodate members around the state who are often unable to travel the length of the state to attend regular meetings, we swing our meeting places up and down New Jersey as much as we can swing invitations from hosting libraries.  Our meetings this past year were hosted by the libraries in Elizabeth, Newark, Hackensack, Trenton, Plainfield, North Plainfield, Long Branch, Camden, and New Brunswick.

Often in these meetings, agenda aside, the unstated objective is to simply provide a means and a place to convene and share ideas.  Particularly for staff in libraries like Trenton, which fell off the radar when their libraries took such funding hits and closures in the recent past, to be able to speak, question and share with other librarians from similar environments meant a return to the community which they had felt a sense of exile from.  In my own opinion that meeting was extremely valuable.

We held a joint meeting with the Diversity and Outreach section, in which again many ideas were visited.  One goal of the meeting was to examine a few larger issues facing both D&O and Urban Libraries, and see if we could come up with a shared mission.  While we do share many concerns, and in fact have many common members, our discussion got somewhat derailed and we didn't settle on any single issue, perhaps because there are other concerns that individuals wanted to focus their energies on. 

Within Urban Libraries this year, a small group focused on facilitating a summit of urban libraries from both school and public libraries, in order to share information and some training. Due largely to scheduling (we gather), the summit had to be postponed.  One member, Cathy Folk-Pushee created and continues to adjust an online clearinghouse of funding resources that will be shared and updated by other section members.

The section ws the primary sponsor for two sessions at the NJLA conference this past May.  One was "Conscious Engagement for Every Library: Forming Stronger Bonds with our Unique Communities" and the other was Building Bridges: Library Services for the Encarcerated"  The section was also the primary sponsor for a special clothing drive for the young adults served at Covenant House in Atlantic City.