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New York State Library News & Events

June 2025

Connect with Knowledge You Trust!

• Expand your library offerings and expertise with Continuing Education for Library Workers! 
• The New York Culture and History Lecture Series is provided by the Research Library. Share exciting book talks and scholarship with your community!
• DHPSNY provides Preservation Practices for Every Library, a service available to cultural institutions around the state to support the preservation of community collections and history.

Accessibility Day of Learning

The NYS Library is celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act with a new initiative focusing on accessibility in libraries. The kick-off is Room for Everyone: A Library Accessibility Day of Learning, an in-person event taking place Wednesday, July 9, at the Huxley Theater in the New York State Museum. 

Participants can expect presentations on web accessibility and technology-related assistance for individuals with disabilities, as well as a panel discussion on Building Services Where Everyone Belongs.  

Register for A Library Accessibility Day of Learning. 

The Importance of Decodable Texts and How to Choose Wisely for Your Library

Date: Thursday, June 12, 2025

Time: 1:00pm - 2:30pm

Starting this fall, all PreK–3rd grade teachers in New York State will be required to teach phonics as part of a structured literacy approach. As schools implement this shift, libraries are uniquely positioned to support families, caregivers, and educators with the right tools and resources.

In this engaging session, you’ll gain foundational knowledge about how children learn to read and how libraries can help bridge the gap between classroom instruction and community support. You'll learn how to curate and recommend high-quality decodable books and early reading resources that align with the Science of Reading.

The Power of Human Relationships: Building Rapport with Library Users Through Social Work

Date: Friday, June 20, 2025

Time: 10:00am - 11:00am

Relationships are the foundation of social work librarianship practice. Social work recognizes the importance of healthy rapport building and it has always utilized it as a guide to communicate, interact and engage with people dealing with complex problems. Librarians have strong relationships with individuals, but they may not understand how powerful the impact of these relationships are when working with patrons struggling to manage psychosocial issues such as: poverty, homelessness, food insecurities, substance abuse, and mental illness. In this webinar ALA Doctoral Spectrum Fellow Shannon Crooks will provide attendees with an overview of the importance and impact of healthy rapport building with library users. Rapport building competencies will be identified and discussed in detail throughout the presentation. Participants will leave the training with strategies for building positive relationships with library users to help manage conflict, develop critical thinking approaches to solve problems and ways to collaborate with library users.

The Roots of Flower City: Horticulture, Empire, and the Remaking of Rochester, New York

Date: Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm

As the first boomtown in the United States, Rochester was an embodiment of the market revolution in the early United States. But when the Panic of 1837 struck the region, the economic foundations of the city collapsed. In the wake of collapse, a new group of horticulture reformers sought to reform the city, region, and their residents. By the middle of the decades of the nineteenth century, the city became home to a group of plant nurserymen and seed dealers whose transnational reach remade the North American landscape and transformed Rochester from the Flour City into the Flower City.

Patenting Apps and Software: U.S. Patent Practice

Date: Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Time: 1:00pm - 2:00pm

How does one protect an app or software in today’s environment? What form or forms of intellectual property are best used to protect the various aspect of an app or software and how to their work together to offer coverage? This program, taught by outreach trainers from the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), will focus primarily on the use of utility patents to protect an app or software while also addressing other forms of intellectual property that are pertinent. Best practices when pursuing a utility patent will also be discussed.

Introduction to Foundation Directory and GuideStar: Using Candid’s Resources for Your Nonprofit

Date: Thursday, June 12, 2025

Time: 11:00am - 12:30pm

Looking for grants for your nonprofit? Join us to learn how to maximize your use of Foundation Directory, the most comprehensive prospect research tool for fundraisers, with 265,000+ grant-maker profiles. You will learn how to search for grant-makers, who have funded organizations working on causes and with communities similar to those you serve. This session will be useful for both new and seasoned users of the Foundation Directory. In this session you will also learn how updating your nonprofit’s Candid profile on GuideStar will grow your organization’s online identity and choose what tens of millions of potential donors see about your organization.

Queer Revolutionary: The Trials of Robert Newburgh

Date: Friday, June 27, 2025

Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm

On the eve of the American Revolution, the British army court-martialed a chaplain, Robert Newburgh, who had been accused of having intimate relations with a man. Newburgh’s enemies cited his flamboyant appearance, defiance of military authority, and seduction of soldiers as proof of his low character. Consumed by fears that the British Empire would soon be torn asunder, they claimed that crimes against nature were crimes against the king.

In this talk, historian John Gilbert McCurdy (Eastern Michigan University) uses the case of Robert Newburgh to glimpse inside eighteenth-century perceptions of queerness. By demanding to have his case heard, Newburgh invoked Enlightenment ideals of equality, arguing passionately that his style of dress and manner should not affect his place in the army or society. Newburgh thus made the case for sexual liberalism, an idea that was wholly consistent with the highest ideals of the American Revolution, and that anticipated a greater freedom for LBGTQ+ individuals in the nation that followed.

DHPSNY Workshops and Webinars

Date: June 4, 5, 6, 14, & 20, 2025

Time: Varies

DHPSNY offers a variety of educational programs and services to qualifying New York institutions. Presented free of charge throughout the state, DHPSNY’s programs address the needs of professionals and volunteers responsible for the care and handling of historical records. DHPSNY’s workshops and webinars discuss emerging issues and best practices, with content scaled to apply to small- and medium-sized organizations with limited resources.

The following program(s) will be offered this month:

• Collective Wisdom: Collaborative Learning to Support Your Community Archiving Projects
• Basic Salvage Techniques for Paper Collections

DHPSNY is a service provided by the NYS Library and NYS Archives to support preservation practices at New York's cultural institutions.

View a complete list of upcoming programs

From the NYS Library Collections: Mushrooms!