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New York State Library News & Events
May 2025
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Connect with Knowledge You Trust!
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The New York Culture and History Lecture Series is provided by the Research Library. Share exciting book talks and scholarship with your community!
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Expand your library offerings and expertise with Continuing Education for Library Workers!
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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.
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The Arvilla E. Diver Library in Schaghticoke, New York was recognized for its popular Let’s Make a Song series during the recent and thoroughly star-studded 2025 Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Awards Show. The Thomas Edison Music Awards ("the Eddies" for short) is an annual celebration dedicated to honoring contributions to the vibrant Capital Region music and arts scene.
Let’s Make a Song is a library-based songwriting workshop for community members of all ages. Since 2018, the Schaghticoke community has come together at the Diver Library to collaborate on nine albums of original music!
Congratulations to everyone at the Diver Library for taking home this exciting award! We love to see a library take the spotlight!
Read more about the Let’s Make a Song project or jump right into the recordings on the Diver Library Bandcamp page.
| | New York Culture and History Lecture Series | |
Barry Goldwater
Date: Thursday, May 8, 2025
Time: 11:00am - 12:00pm
| Barry Goldwater, a veteran of World War II, spent virtually his whole political career as a Republican Senator from Arizona. When he began in the 1950s, his strongly conservative views were a minority position within the party. And he lost his run for president against Lyndon Johnson in 1964. But starting with that campaign, the Republican right wing grew steadily stronger, and Goldwater emerged as an icon of the conservative movement. Even so, his spiky independence and his relatively liberal social views made for a lifetime of quirky and lively debate. | |
Closely, Consciously Reading Feminism
Date: Friday, May 9, 2025
Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
| The significant archive of writing that came out of the US women’s liberation movement, from 1965 to 1980, speaks to the phenomenal power of reading, as an act that is both personal and about the collective good. In this talk, Dr. Yung-Hsing Wu examines the importance of reading and how it brought a host of women, each with their own history with the broader movement, into relation with one another. | |
Copyright Basics and Considerations for Entrepreneurs
Date: Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Time: 1:00pm - 2:00pm
| If you are an entrepreneur or a small business owner, understanding copyright could be essential to protecting your content and ensuring you are not infringing on someone else’s. Attend this free webinar for U.S. entrepreneurs and small businesses with an expert from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to learn the basics of copyright protection, registration, and enforcement. | |
American Flygirl
Date: Friday, May 16, 2025
Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
| A uniquely hidden figure, Hazel Ying Lee was a pioneering trailblazer in the history of WWII, aviation, women, the military, and America, yet her inspiring story and extraordinary accomplishments have been unheralded and ignored. The only book to focus on an Asian American female aviator, American Flygirl (Kensigton 2024) breaks this silence, illuminating the structural and racial barriers Lee faced to become the first Asian American woman to earn a pilot’s license, join the WASPs, and fight for this country amid widespread anti-Asian sentiment and racist policies, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese internment camps. This online book talk coincides with AAPI Heritage Month, which is observed throughout May to recognize the contributions and influence of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans to the history, culture, and achievements of the United States. Hazel came of age at a time in America where Asians were subjected to unjust discrimination and denied the rights granted to Euro-Americans. The years between 1882-1943 are known as the Exclusion Era in Oregon. Most occupations outside Chinatown were not open to them, and many places of business were completely off-limits. Every Chinese American, even children who were born in the United States, was required to carry identification – and it was worse for Chinese women, who endured layers of biases and widespread discrimination. Yet a new age was dawning, and for the first time,the idea that more than child-rearing and homemaking might be available to women began to take root. Some women, brave enough to go against convention, found themselves willing and eager to exchange traditional roles to become pilots and explore new opportunities in aviation. A fire was lit in Hazel that would change the course of her life. | |
Washington Irving: Folk Historian of the Hudson Valley
Date: Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Time: 11:00am - 12:00pm
| Washington Irving is presented in his time and tradition. For the History of New York and the Hudson Valley folktales, he created Diedrich Knickerbocker, a Dutch-American who introduced the Dutch customs and folk beliefs of the Hudson Valley to Irving’s American audience and made Irving the first internationally known American author. A brief overview will give an impression of the extent and depth of this popular culture in the Knickerbocker works. In particular, courting customs as these are found in The History of New York and “The legend of Sleepy Hollow” will be our subject. | |
Oy Vey, King George! The Secrets of the Jewish Patriots in the American Revolution
Date: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
| | Jews fought in the Revolution. They built American synagogues in wartime, and in an era where all men were declared equal, they fought to make it a reality. Discover how American Jews joined the patriot cause and were welcomed by the patriots. How did American Jews fare differently than Jews elsewhere, and how did that make American Judaism and American rights distinct? | | Continuing Education for Library Workers | |
Mural Toolkit for Libraries Lunch & Learn
Date: Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Time: 12:00pm - 12:45pm
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To coincide with the 2025 summer reading theme of Color Our World, the New York State Library partnered with muralist and educator Jade Warrick to create a toolkit that libraries can use to develop mural making programs with patrons, providing step by step curriculum, materials lists, best practices, and links to additional helpful resources. No previous painting experience will be required to successfully utilize this guide.
Join us for a lunch & learn session outlining how you can use this toolkit to create a mural for your library, highlighting components of the toolkit and giving examples of other libraries that have engaged in mural projects.
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Libraries Supporting Literacy Best Practices
Date: Thursday, May 22, 2025
Time: 1:30pm - 2:30pm
| The New York State Education Department's (NYSED's) Office of Early Learning invites library staff to a unique literacy event aimed at supporting the state’s latest literacy initiatives. As essential partners in early childhood education, libraries significantly contribute to nurturing a culture of literacy that reaches beyond classrooms into homes. This session will offer valuable insights into research-based literacy practices, strategies for enhancing the home-school connection, and methods to involve families in creating robust literacy foundations for young learners. Furthermore, the event will showcase the integral role of libraries in fostering a love for reading, establishing them as inviting spaces for gathering, learning, and community engagement. | | Preservation Practices for Every Library | |
DHPSNY Workshops and Webinars
Date: May 8, 20, 27, & 28, 2025
Time: Varies
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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:
- Getting Started with Participatory and Community Archiving
- 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.
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Would you like to get away from it all, even temporarily? Thanks to NOVELny, a free suite of databases available to all New Yorkers, you now can!
In addition to tons of educational content, Gale databases have virtual escape rooms and plans for creating your own! Be prepared to dazzle your friends and family at the next gathering with an adventure!
Video: Build Your Own Escape Room Using Gale Resources!
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In April, the NYS Library held a T3/Transforming Teen Services workshop for 30 attendees representing libraries from six different Public Library Systems.
The full day workshop was hosted by the Mid York Library System and was facilitated by two trainers from the New York T3 team: Stephanie Markham and Kenneth Roman. The focus of the workshop was on Connected Learning, one of the core concepts of Teen Services.
Read more about the T3 April workshop.
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