What has stayed with me since our Annual Leadership Forum in Las Vegas is the ease with which members connected: finding a colleague working through a similar challenge, exchanging an approach worth trying and making plans to keep talking. Your feedback also reinforced how much those connections matter. One member shared that the ULC Annual Leadership Forum helped them reconnect with peers and remind them of why they chose this career. This is the power of gathering!

Kelvin Watson and the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District team gave us an extraordinary setting for those exchanges. Now, through our Directors Calls, Member Communities and conversations across the network, we have ample opportunities to deepen those relationships and put what we learned to work.

That strength also carries into our advocacy. Earlier this month, ULC and the Association for Rural & Small Libraries filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission making the case for preserving E-Rate for all public libraries. Contributions from Fulton County, Live Oak, Nashville and Kansas City, showed what affordable broadband makes possible, from workforce development to digital access and education on emerging technologies. Their examples brought the needs of the communities you serve directly into the conversation.

We are applying that same collective influence to e-content too. At the Forum, major platform providers acknowledged that ULC’s advocacy is helping open conversations about more flexible licensing models. The ULC E-Content Action Team continues to work with peer organizations and build relationships with industry leaders in order to give us several avenues to press for greater transparency and sustainable terms. Members have also been putting our E-book Communications Toolkit to use by communicating why this e-book pricing issue is so urgent, and what can be done to help libraries better serve their communities.

Alongside these efforts, we are helping members strengthen relationships with their key decision-makers. ULC recently accepted an invitation from the Indiana Public Library Association to share advocacy strategies and resources as libraries prepare for changes to local budget approval processes. And on Capitol Hill, we continue bringing members into conversations with key congressional offices so that federal priorities are informed by libraries’ experience and community impact. These are the opportunities we welcome in order to provide effective support to ULC states and provinces.

To that end, I am also pleased to welcome Calgary Public Library CEO Sarah Meilleur to the ULC Board. Sarah brings the experience of leading one of North America’s most impactful libraries and an essential perspective on the opportunities and challenges facing our Canadian members. Her voice will strengthen ULC, the Board’s work and our connections across the full membership.

The value of this network grows when a connection becomes a resource, a shared challenge becomes a collective priority and members’ experience shapes the decisions that affect libraries. ULC will keep turning that strength into practical support, stronger partnerships and sustained advocacy on your behalf.

Thank you for being a part of the ULC Membership!