This year’s LACUNY Dialogues will be held on Friday, February 23, 2024 and will start promptly at 2:00 p.m. The event will take place virtually and be delivered via Zoom. You may register to attend at https://ccny.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0ld-muqzosGtX69hMEAUOs4lQroTo6SRIF. 

CUNY library workers belong to many communities. We interact with our colleagues in the library, which is often its own department within a home institution, which is also a part of CUNY. Depending on our job functions, we may participate in CUNY-wide working groups or subcommittees related to specialties such as collection development, scholarly communication, or electronic resources. We may choose to belong to established local or national professional organizations, and/or to form personal, less formal connections with other information professionals in communities of our own creation.

The theme of this year’s LACUNY Dialogues is “Building Community. Strengthening Connections.” We invite presentations from librarians, library staff, and colleagues across information professional titles on how they define, build, or maintain communities.

Possible subject areas or topics may include (but are not limited to) responses to the following prompts:

• Who do we see as members of our community?
• How do we set about building and maintaining the connections that we have?
• Is there any way in which the last four years have strengthened a community you belong to?
• What steps do you take to maintain connections with multiple communities?
• How do you leave a community you no longer feel aligned with?
• Who has traditionally been excluded from our definitions of community?
• Where do students fit into our definition of community? Non-library colleagues?
• How do we bridge divides between titles, academic departments, and other divisions that may prevent us from providing the best possible service to the communities that we serve?
• Who has historically been overlooked by or excluded from our communities and how is this being addressed?
• What are we as CUNY library workers getting right about building maintaining communities? What are we getting wrong and how can we go about fixing these problems?
• We are interested in hearing your thoughts about community, belonging, fostering connections, and more.