The Urban Affairs library has been threatened with closure more than once. One librarian recalled how in the late nineties City Councillor Jack Layton defended the library and helped to form a citizens’ group called “Friends of the Urban Affairs Library.” During a meeting Layton jumped on a table declaring the library “a jewel”. A librarian who was at the meeting remembers: “We all said afterward ‘Did we dream that?’ But we can’t have because we all had the same dream!'”