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New York State Library News & Events
June 2026
| | The New York State Library’s services, programs, and collections are made possible by federal Library Service and Technology Act funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. | |
Connect with Knowledge You Trust!
The NYS Library continues its work to support New York Libraries, removing barriers to build community. Read to the bottom of this email to learn more about our continuing Room for Everyone webinar series.
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Roar into Summer Reading with the NYS Library! | |
Kick off your summer of exploration with the Super Story Party event happening in the NYS Museum in Albany on Sunday, June 7, 2026! Families can visit with staff from local libraries and find out about the exciting events they have planned for their summer programs surrounding Summer Reading and this year’s nature exploration and paleontology theme of Unearth a Story (TM)! There will be a variety of craft activities, music and a DJ, demonstrations of Double Dutch, and even a Dino Magic show!
Be sure to come early to sample all the great Super Story Party activities and then stay to spend the afternoon on the 4th floor of the State Museum to explore the new interactive exhibit entitled “Expedition Dinosaur: Rise of the Mammals.”
Get the details for Super Story Party 2026!
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This year, there’s a special Summer Reading WonderBox giveaway available for Talking Book and Braille Library patrons thanks to the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS)! WonderBox kits for younger kids (PreK-2) include a braille book about dinosaurs and a small audiobook player with books about dinos preloaded. For kids grades 3-6, the kit includes an audiobook player with a Magic Treehouse title preloaded. The WonderBox is free for patrons to keep!
Also: a new Narrated Soundscape drops every Monday beginning June 22. Take an immersive audio journey through the landscapes of four national parks!
Read more on the Talking Book and Braille Library blog!
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There is more than one way to unearth a story with the NYS Library this summer:
- Celebrate New York’s role in the Revolution and the ways that everyday New Yorkers embody the principle of revolution with stories from our Personal History Initiative.
| | Continuing Education for Library Workers | |
Hear Our Voices: A Narrative Writing Workshop for Librarians and Social Workers
Date: Friday, June 5
Time: 11:00am - 12:00pm
| Hear Our Voices is a narrative-based group process designed to unearth critical consciousness through guided writing, shared storytelling, and structured dialogue. Participants are invited into guided writing prompts drawn from their lived experience in practice and open discussion to explore how the personal is connected to the collective. Through the workshops, librarians and social workers examine their unique and shared experiences working with the community and strengthen their network of support. | |
NOVELny – Gale Resources: For Higher Ed Users
Date: Thursday, June 11
Time: 11:00am - 11:45am
| Discover how NOVELny’s Gale resources support the research, learning, and professional needs of higher education users. This session highlights key content and advanced tools within Gale Academic OneFile, Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, Gale Presents: Peterson’s Test and Career Prep, and The New York Times Digital Collection. Learn how to navigate scholarly articles, explore balanced viewpoints, access test preparation and career readiness tools, and integrate high‑quality news content. We’ll also cover features such as citation tools, translation, text‑to‑speech, and content saving to help students and faculty maximize these powerful resources. Join us and empower your campus community with these powerful NOVELny resources! | |
Minimum Standards for Libraries - Selection and Reconsideration Policies
Date: Friday, June 12
Time: 1:00pm - 2:00pm
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Selection and reconsideration policies are crucial elements in supporting the mission of libraries. This webinar will address:
- The current climate of high scrutiny of materials and the ethical obligations of library workers to uphold professional ethics
- Intellectual freedom, the First Amendment, and ALA’s Library Bill of Rights & Freedom to Read Statement
- Access to controversial ideas does not mean the library endorses them
- What does it mean to have a balanced collection?
- Featured resource: Public Library Collection Management Policy Template and Guide (2022)
- Materials selection policy
- Affirm a commitment to intellectual freedom
- What criteria are used for selecting materials? Who selects? Will the Library accept donated materials?
- What criteria are used for weeding/deselection?
- Acknowledge collections the library doesn’t select (Hoopla, OverDrive/Libby)
- New: Does the library collect AI-generated materials?
- Reconsideration policy
- How must requests be submitted?
- Who has standing to submit - residents only?
- Is there a max number of reconsideration requests a single person can make at a time? How will multiple requests to reconsider the same item be handled?
- What other information must a submission include?
- Who will organize and complete the review process?
- Is there an appeals process?
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NY250: Great Give Back
Date: Tuesday, June 16
Time: 10:00am - 11:00am
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Want to have fun while supporting your community? It’s easy when you take part in The Great Give Back, a community service initiative developed by the Suffolk Cooperative Library System in 2017 to connect library patrons to meaningful volunteer experiences.
This year, The Great Give Back will be bigger than ever before. As the country commemorates America250, the America Gives initiative encourages volunteerism and calls on citizens to step up and help. In New York, The Great Give Back is partnering with the New York State Library to be a part of America Gives. All participants and programs will be tracked on The Great Give Back website, and the final numbers will be sent to America Gives, showing the power of public libraries to create resilient communities.
Join this webinar to find out how to get involved, some examples of what libraries have done in the past, best practices for partnerships, the power of working with your community to accomplish a shared goal, and more!
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Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence
Date: Wednesday, June 24
Time: 2:00pm - 3:00pm
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This training will help participants better understand, identify, and respond to technology abuses and online harms. At the end of this training, participants will be able to:
- Define and recognize technology-facilitated gender-based violence
- Understand what technology-facilitated gender-based violence can look like; and
- Understand how to respond to reports and cases involving technology-facilitated gender-based violence.
This program is facilitated by the Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and is one of three trainings being offered. Please consider registering for the other two sessions:
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Onsite Walking Tour of the Local History and Genealogy Resources at the New York State Library
Date: June 5 & 26
Time: Varies
| The New York State Library is a treasure chest of resources for those tracing their family histories. Join us for an on-site tour highlighting published genealogies, local histories, church records, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) records, United States and New York State Census records, newspapers on microfilm, city directories, and more. NYS Library staff will lead the tour. | | Library Accessibility Webinar Series | | |
The Room for Everyone series continues in 2026 with a full slate of virtual accessibility trainings for libraries.
For even more resources on library accessibility, don’t miss our newly launched Library Accessibility Guide, complete with helpful overviews, tips, and resources to help make sure that New York’s libraries are accessible to all.
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Universal Design - It's Not Only About Accessibility
Date: Friday, June 12
Time: 11:00am - 12:00pm
| This presentation will provide some basic knowledge on disability etiquette and discuss the pivotal role libraries play for people with disabilities. We will also discuss some challenges libraries face, such as service animals vs. emotional support animals, disability that manifests in behavioral issues that may challenge the library environment, and why libraries are important for the wellbeing of people with disabilities. | |
We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World
Date: Thursday, June 4
Time: 12:30pm - 1:30pm
| In the late nineteenth century, the U.S. government and American corporations generated an unprecedented amount of paper records. The data complex emerged as a national network of repositories built to house all those documents. Over the next several decades, the data complex expanded from traditional archives and libraries to bombproof bunkers and securitized data banks. In the 21st century, some tech companies are working to build data centers in outer space, while others have figured out how to store backups of digital files in synthetic DNA. How did Americans become so obsessed with preserving data, and how is the data complex expanding and changing today? How is it changing us? As we increasingly think, communicate, and relate through digital technology, our nervous systems grow more entangled with fiber optics, further blurring the line between human life and the life of machines, between our everyday thoughts and the dreams of the data complex. | |
The Ancient House: Constructing Community in the Seventeenth-Century New York Borderlands
Date: Tuesday, June 9
Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
| Historian Erin Kramer will discuss how early relationships between the Dutch and Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) shaped the development and significance of Albany, New York. Albany (called “the ancient house” by a Haudenosaunee orator) was an essential space where Indigenous people articulated what it meant for Europeans to settle in their world. This talk will illustrate how Haudenosaunee people shaped the town, its politics, and the laws enforced there through a century of negotiations, and how they sought redress and to hold colonists to their agreements. By incorporating Haudenosaunee stories into the broader narrative of New York history, Kramer will examine how Albany became a negotiated community, a site of dialogue, and a critical central place in early America. | |
The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence
Date: Wednesday, June 17
Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
| The American Revolution told from inside the home. Prior to the American Revolution, the urban centers of colonial North America had little direct experience of war. With the outbreak of violence, British forces occupied every major city, invading the most private of spaces: the home. Building on a stunning wealth of primary sources, Lauren Duval vividly captures daily life during the Revolution through the eyes and ears of those who intimately experienced it, showing how men and women of all races, statuses, and states of freedom understood its implications for their lives, families, and the nascent American Republic. | |
Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History, Author talk with Laura E. Helton
Date: Wednesday, June 24
Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
| Helton will discuss her recent book, Scattered and Fugitive Things, which tells the stories of Black collectors who created the first enduring set of African American archives in the early twentieth century. In defiance of those who cast doubt on the idea of Black history, these collectors activated bibliophile Arturo Schomburg’s declaration that “the American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.” That activation entailed both risk and pleasure, and it produced archival abundance—a proliferation of files and collections documenting the rich history of the African diaspora. Generations of scholars and readers have benefited from that abundance, but what did these archives mean at the moment of their founding? And what does this history teach us today, when Black history is again being challenged? | | | | |
