ULA Annual Conference 2026

Business meeting for members of the Health Roundtable (HEART), or attendees who are interested in HEART.

While reflecting on your career in the past, have you ever stepped back from an opportunity that you wanted because you doubted yourself? In the workplace, confidence often gets mistaken for competence, and that means talented employees can be overlooked simply because they hesitate. The truth is that confidence isn’t something you’re born with. It’s a skill you can build. This session will get you started on building that skill.

We’ll explore practical strategies to strengthen your confidence starting today. We’ll also break down the key differences between how confident individuals act compared to those who aren’t, so you can recognize the patterns and start shifting your own approach. You’ll leave with actionable tools and the one powerful word that can transform your future, so next year’s self-reflection can be even more positive. Don’t opt yourself out; step in and own your potential.

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
1. Recognize behavioral differences between confident individuals and those lacking confidence and identify which patterns they currently exhibit.
2. Understand the link between confidence and perceived competence and how this impacts career opportunities.
3. Leverage neural priming techniques to positively influence biochemistry and create a mindset conducive to confidence.
4. Enhance self-talk strategies to replace limiting beliefs with empowering language.
5. Develop a simple daily goal that reinforces confidence and forward momentum.

The Health Outreach Librarian for the Salt Lake County Library reflects on his first year in a brand-new position. He will share lessons learned from the outreach, partnerships, programs, and training opportunities he had in his first year. The Engagement Specialist from the Network of the National Library of Medicine will share the benefits of the Consumer Health Information Specialization training and certification in public library service.

Memory Cafés are welcoming, inclusive programs designed for individuals living with dementia and their care partners--offering connection, creativity, and joy in a supportive environment. This session will explore how libraries can become leaders in building dementia-friendly communities through these simple yet powerful programs.

In this session, you'll learn what a Memory Café is, why it matters, and how it aligns with the core values of public libraries. We will cover practical steps to get started, from program design and outreach to developing partnerships with local aging and memory care organizations.

We'll discuss our own experiences launch a Memory Café, sharing lessons learned, challenges faced, and what has worked best in our community. Whether you're just exploring the idea or are ready to start your own Memory Café, you'll leave with takeaways and inspiration to make your library a place of connection for every mind.

This session explores the Eccles Health Sciences Library’s (EHSL) role in commemorating milestones across the University of Utah’s health sciences campus. As colleges, schools, and departments celebrate anniversaries and historical achievements, they often turn to the library for curated materials, particularly photographs, from EHSL’s historical collections. Additionally, these collaborations help the library grow its own archives through new donations of historical material from the respective collaborators.

This session showcases how these partnerships can bolster both physical and digital collections. Attendees will discover how these efforts helped foster campus engagement, preserve institutional memory, and develop inclusive historical narratives.

This session shares practical strategies for assisting campus partners, fortifying institutional memory, and further developing archival resources at the library.

Auditing digitized AV files is essential for ensuring accuracy and preservation, but our early approach was anything but efficient. We started with spreadsheets and formulas to compare filenames and descriptive metadata, paired with separate tools for technical metadata checks—a process that was slow and prone to human error. To speed things up, we introduced small scripts for individual tasks, then refined each by identifying the essential steps for a comprehensive audit, and eventually combined them into a single, streamlined tool that verifies filenames against spreadsheets and audits technical metadata in one pass.

When imaging AV media became part of our workflow, new standards demanded additional checks for image files. Instead of introducing additional manual steps, we expanded our script to handle these requirements too, creating a unified solution for auditing across formats. Today, this tool saves significant time and ensures consistency, but we’re not stopping here. Future plans include adding progress indicators, notifications, and even rewriting the script in Python for greater flexibility and scalability.

This session will share how we transformed a tedious, manual process into an automated system that supports quality control at scale—and what’s next on the horizon.

Finding federal government information is often a considerable challenge, yet understanding the history of the Government Publishing Office, as the largest publisher in the world, can aid researchers in finding relevant information. This history predates its official formation in 1860 and includes the transition to a digital world. Historians and researchers will find in this presentation some of the tools and strategies to assist in their quest for government information.

Libraries play a vital role in preserving the stories of their communities. This session will explore practical ways to develop or enhance a local and family history section in your library—whether you're just getting started or looking to expand existing resources. Learn how to identify valuable local materials, collaborate with community partners, and create engaging displays and programming that connect patrons to their heritage. We'll also introduce the FamilySearch Affiliate Library program as one optional pathway to enrich your library’s genealogical offerings. Affiliate status provides access to expanded digital collections and tools that support family history research, but it’s just one of many strategies available to libraries of all sizes and types. Presenters will share examples, templates, and tips from libraries that have successfully built history collections tailored to their communities. You’ll leave with actionable ideas to help your library become a trusted resource for historical discovery and preservation—no matter your starting point. This session is ideal for librarians interested in strengthening their library’s role in local history, genealogy, and community engagement.

Orem Library's focus on inspiring lifelong learning and creating enriching opportunities has led us to create a monthly storytime for patrons in grades k-2. This presentation will reflect on our best practices and learning opportunities over the past three years of stories, songs, STEAM, yoga, games, and critical thinking in the hopes that other libraries might consider how to provide regular programming for the kids in their communities who are too big for storytime and too young for tween book clubs.

Help shape the future of the Utah Library Association. In this interactive session, participants will reflect on current challenges, share ideas, and collaborate in small groups to “remix” those ideas into actionable possibilities. Input gathered will inform ULA programming and future conferences, with a focus on building stronger structures, deeper connections, and collective impact across Utah libraries.