Media contact:
Beth Dempsey, 248.349.7810 or beth@bethdempsey.com
June 26, 2008 (CHICAGO) -- The Urban Libraries Council (ULC) has selected Nashville as the site of its 2009 Partners for Success Conference. Nashville Public Library will co-host the event with the ULC. The conference is designed to bring together library directors, trustees and their key elected officials around the civic agenda of communities across North America. This conference, held every other year, is a unique gathering of national leaders and thinkers.
The host city has the unique opportunity to showcase its libraries, cultural organizations and redevelopment projects for city and county administrators from across North America.
The 2009 conference theme is “Regional Solutions for Local Vitality.” The theme is selected to draw a broad and high-level national audience of public officials from cities and counties, in addition to library directors and library trustees. As the boundaries between cities and counties overlap in new “megapolitan” regions, this conference will look at regional networks and collaboration.
“The aim of this conference is to showcase libraries as community assets and Nashville is an ideal setting for that,” said ULC President Martín Gómez. “Its library plays a strong civic role and is valued as a partner in Nashville’s continuing development as the economic cornerstone of Middle Tennessee.”
Conference speakers, including elected officials, library directors and experts in the field, will discuss the ways cooperation across cities and counties enables local communities to thrive. The scope of the conference will include changes happening across the metropolitan landscape in cities, suburbs and the urban fringe.
Partners for Success Conference is a biennial event, launched in 2001. It’s part of the ULC’s larger initiative to examine the emerging ways libraries contribute to the improvement of urban life. The conference is noted not only for its ability to convene a variety of urban activists, librarians, trustees, mayors and other city and county officials, but for the rich discussion and research it generates. Past host cities have included Boston, Chicago and Cleveland.
Nashville Mayor Karl Dean sees Nashville as a perfect fit for the 2009 theme of cross- metropolitan cooperation: “We benefit everyday through regional cooperation through our own metropolitan government, which consolidated city and county government in 1963,” said Mayor Dean. “Nashville is a thriving city and its suburban counties are booming. This has led to much discussion about future growth in the region. We have a wonderful quality of life in Middle Tennessee, and we intend to preserve and enhance it through active planning.”
For more information about the Urban Libraries Council and its programs to define the library’s role in strengthening cities visit on the web at www.urbanlibraries.org.
About the Urban Libraries Council
For more than 30 years the Urban Libraries Council (ULC) has worked to strengthen public libraries as an essential part of urban life. A membership organization of North America�s premier public library systems and the corporations that serve them, ULC serves as a forum for sharing best practices resulting from targeted research, education and forecasting. ULC's programs are acclaimed for inspiring new organizational models that invigorate urban libraries and enrich the areas surrounding them. ULC is headquartered in Chicago. For more information, visit the group on the Web at www.urbanlibraries.org.
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