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New York State Library News & Events

December 2024

Connect with Knowledge You Trust!


  • The New York Culture and History Lecture Series is provided by the Research Library. Share this 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 history.

The End of Another Chapter

Ornate decorative end paper marbled in tones of green, gold, and gray.

We hope you had a wonderful 2024 and want to thank you for spending some of it with the NYS Library. We’re so happy to share work from around the library with you, and we hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more fascinating public programs, training opportunities, and glimpses into our collections. 


Until then, we’ll leave you at the end of this year with a fantastic find from our shelves. The image above captures some gorgeous endpapers from a copy of History of Waterbury and the Naugatuck by William Jamies Pape (call number 974.67 qAp21). 


Before the advances of large-scale printing in the 20th century, the endpapers of books often had decorative paper marbling. Endpapers are also the traditional place to put bookplates or an inscription. Inscriptions are fun, but we’re glad we can enjoy this soothing pattern uninterrupted. 


Be sure to explore other treasures from the collections of the NYS Library on our blog

New York Culture and History Lecture Series

Clipping from the Troy Sentinel, including the text of ’Twas the Night Before Christmas and a colorful illustration of St. Nick.

A Visit from St. Nicholas: A Holiday Reading and Historic Treasure

Date: Saturday, December 21, 2024

Time: 11:00am - 12:00pm

Celebrate the magic of the season with a special holiday storytime and read-aloud of ’Twas the Night Before Christmas at the New York State Museum! This cherished holiday tradition comes to life as you explore the fascinating history of the poem with a rare treat—the original 201-year-old Troy Daily Sentinel featuring the first-ever printing of this iconic story, courtesy of the NYS Library’s Manuscripts and Special Collections.


After the reading, young visitors can channel their holiday spirit by writing letters to Santa at our festive letter-writing station. Don’t miss this enchanting event for all ages, blending storytelling, history, and holiday cheer!


This program is being conducted in partnership with the New York State Museum.

Learn More About A Visit from St. Nicholas
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Brooklynites Book Talk

Date: Thursday, January 23, 2025

Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Meet the Black Brooklynites who defined New York City’s most populous borough through their search for social justice. Before it was a borough, Brooklyn was our nation’s third largest city. Its free Black community attracted people from all walks of life—businesswomen, church leaders, laborers, and writers—who sought to grow their city in a radical anti-slavery vision.


In this book talk, Dr. Prithi Kanakamedala (Professor of History, Bronx Community College and CUNY Graduate Center) will discuss her first full-length book. Brooklynites (NYU Press, 2024) is a cultural and social history as told through four ordinary families from Brooklyn’s nineteenth-century free Black community. Their lives offer valuable lessons on freedom, democracy, and family—both the ones we’re born with and the ones we choose. Their powerful stories continue to resonate today, as borough residents fill the streets in search of a more just city.


Prithi Kanakamedala is a Professor of History at Bronx Community College CUNY. She is also a faculty member in the M.A. in Liberal Studies Program at CUNY Graduate Center. Prithi is an active public historian based in New York City. Brooklynites: the Remarkable Story of the Free Black Communities that Shaped a Borough (NYU Press, 2024) is her first full-length book.

Register for Brooklynites Book Talk
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Under Alien Skies: Environment, Suffering, and the Defeat of the British Military in Revolutionary America

Date: Thursday, January 30, 2025

Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm

The Revolutionary War is often celebrated as marking the birth of American republicanism, liberty, and representative democracy. Yet for the tens of thousands of British and Hessian troops sent 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to wage war under alien skies, such a progressive picture, as Vaughn Scribner reveals, could not have been further from the truth. In Under Alien Skies, Scribner illustrates how foreign soldiers' negative perceptions of the American environment merged with harsh wartime realities to elicit considerable physical, mental, and emotional anguish. Whether trudging through alligator-infested swamps, nursing a comrade back to health in a rain-sodden tent, or digging trenches in a burned-out port city, most who fought in America under the British army's flag ultimately deemed themselves strangers fighting in a strange land. For them, Revolutionary America looked nothing like the "happy land . . . blessed with every climate" that Revolutionary republicans so successfully promoted. Instead, the War of Independence descended into a quagmire of anxiety, destruction, and distress at the hands of the American environment—a "Diabolical Country," as one British soldier opined, "which no Earthly Compensation can put me in Charity with."


Vaughn Scribner is an Associate Professor of British American history at the University of Central Arkansas. In addition to Under Alien Skies, he is also the author of two other books, Inn Civility: Urban Taverns and Early American Civil Society (NYU Press, 2019) and Merpeople: A Human History (Reaktion Books, 2020). He is currently working on a biography of America's first celebrity con man, "Lord" Timothy Dexter of Newburyport, MA.

Register for Under Alien Skies

Preservation Practices for Every Library

DHPS NY quill logo

DHPSNY Workshops and Webinars

Date: January 28, 29, 30 and 31

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:

  • Archives 101


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

View All Upcoming DHPSNY Programs

Recent News & Updates

Program Update: Dolly Parton Imagination Library

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a community-based program mailing free, high-quality, age-appropriate books to registered children from birth until their 5th birthday, no matter their income. 


To encourage participation in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library program, the New York State Legislature has appropriated $500,000 to be awarded through a competitive grant program.


Funds will be available to libraries, library systems, non-profits, school districts, charter schools, non-public schools, and BOCES in New York State. 


The grant application is now open! All applications must be submitted by 1/10/2025 at 5:00 PM.


Learn more about NYS Grants for Participation in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

New Imaging Technology from RIT 

In case you missed it: on August 15th, the Cultural Education Center hosted two Rochester Institute of Technology students as they demonstrated new imaging technology to representatives of the NYS Library, Archives, and Museum.  


Izzy Moyer (Museum Studies) and Sai Keshav Sasanapuri (Computer Science) spent the day using MISHA—Multispectral Imaging System for Historical Artifacts—to take photographs of invisible or hard-to-see marks on items ranging from burned colonial records to a watermark on a military decree, to a faded label on a kettle. 


Learn more about MISHA on the NYS Library blog