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MARK AUSTIN THOMAS: Here’s another sign New Orleans is back in business: This weekend, it’s hosting its first major city-wide convention since Hurricane Katrina. Marketplace’s Lisa Napoli has more.

LISA NAPOLI: New Orleans is getting bookish. 18,000 librarians from around the country add up to quite a milestone for the city.

The American Library Association kept its plan to host its annual meeting in the Big Easy and this weekend, they’re filling up 8,000 hotel rooms and generating millions of dollars in revenue.

Those are numbers Kelly Schulz of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau needs to hear:

KELLY SCHULZ:“Tourism is huge, huge business for New Orleans. It creates 85,000 jobs and it provides 35 percent of our city’s operating budget.”

Schulz says the city’s convention business is at about 60 percent of what it would be in a normal year, but she says some groups have been relocating their meetings to New Orleans as a show of support.

I’m Lisa Napoli for Marketplace.