They've met before, so it's not that crazy, but a number of people have descended on the city for this year's Beyond Hope library conference - Call Us, Maybe: Connecting People and Libraries, Now.
On Monday morning, Prince George Public Library chief Allan Wilson welcomed the more than 120 out-of-town delegates from the North Central Library Federation to the city where they will participate in two full days of learning and sharing library best practices.
The bi-annual event, revived by Wilson when he came to Prince George, was the brainchild of former chief librarian Edel Toner-Rogala. This year, the conference was spearheaded by the library's public service manager Janet Marren.
As the largest library in the north, Prince George has regional responsibilities that make it the perfect host for an educational forum, said Wilson.
The conference has something for everyone who is interested in delivering information, he said, ranging from public libraries to law libraries, to health services, to the school district.
Sessions cover issues such as dealing with angry patrons, handling copyright issues, helping sort out technological problems and identifying favourite books.
This year's theme encompasses the role libraries play in a community as an information source, as well as the need for area libraries to network and communicate with each other.
"The province wants to see greater collaboration [between libraries]," said Wilson. "Sometimes we can do that easily and seamlessly but because of provincial funding cuts and our own resource problems, the Beyond Hope is a way we can come together and kind of pool our resources and think about these things."
Among the things Wilson said Prince George can learn from other members of the federation is how to operate in a smaller space, which he foresees as being necessary during the 2015 Canada Winter Games.
"We're going to have to close down part of the library and move out to the outer areas and run a library in a different environment for a couple of weeks," Wilson said. "A lot of our colleagues in the regional areas, the smaller libraries, they become valuable allies as they've got experience being stuffed into smaller venues."
Delegates were addressed by keynote speaker Sandra Singh Monday morning, who Wilson said he was excited to have in town.
Singh is the chief librarian for the Vancouver Public Library and has served as the director of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at UBC.
The local library owes a great deal to the centre and Singh, said Wilson, since they've put up a great deal of funding for the digitization of local historical newspapers.
"We're really grateful to her," Wilson said.
Beyond Hope, which takes place at the Civic Centre, wraps up Tuesday afternoon.
