Now Open: Registration for the 2026 New York Archives Virtual Conference
NYAC will be having its annual (free) virtual conference on Friday, June 5th, 2026! Our conference program is listed below.
NYAC Watch Parties
Want to get out of your house, meet friendly colleagues, and consume some great archives content? Sign up for a New York Archives Conference Watch Party! This year, 10 institutions across New York State are holding Watch Parties where you can view the conference with others from your area, with time for socializing and discussion. Watch Party registration will close on Thursday, May 28, 2026.
Watch Party Hosts & Locations:
- CUNY Office of Library Services: 555 W. 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
- Long Island Library Resources Council (LILRC), Suffolk Cooperative Library System: 627 Sunrise Hwy, Bellport, NY 11713
- Northern New York Library Network (NNYLN): 6721 US Hwy 11, Potsdam, NY 13676
- Central New York Library Resources Council (CLRC): 5710 Commons Park, East Syracuse, NY 13057
- University of Rochester, Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, Rush Rhees Library: 755 Library Road, Rochester, NY 14627
- History Center in Tompkins County, CAP Art Gallery: 110 North Tioga Street, Ithaca, NY 14850
- National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Bullpen Theater: 25 Main St, Cooperstown, NY 13326
- Newburgh Free Library, Hub at the Main Library: 124 Grand St, Newburgh, NY 12550
- University of Albany IST & Special Collection and Archives, ETEC Building: 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222
- SUNY Fredonia, Kelly Family Auditorium: 280 Central Ave, Fredonia, NY 14063
Become a NYAC Sponsor!
Support from sponsors helps us keep our virtual conference free-to-attend and will enable us to bring future events to fruition.
📁 Folder Tier Sponsorship ($200): We’ll feature your logo in the list of sponsors on our website, conference slides (shown during breaks), and social media posts.
📦 Box Tier Sponsorship ($600): Three minutes of airtime during our annual conference (via a pre-recorded video), allowing you to tell our attendees about your organization. And your logo featured in our list of sponsors (see above).
Email the NYAC Treasurer, Ryan Perry (rperry@clrc.org) to learn more and to sign on as a sponsor.
Thank you to our 2026 Sponsors
Schedule at a Glance
Friday, June 5th, 2026
| 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM | Opening Remarks and Keynote |
| 10:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Morning Break |
| 10:45 AM – 11:15 AM | A Tree Before Forest Approach: Updating the Policies and Procedures of the New York Botanical Garden Archives |
| 11:15 AM – 11:45 AM | One does not simply digitize all the things: Two case studies in digitizing oversized items at Cornell University Library |
| 11:45 AM – 1:00 PM | Lunch |
| 1:00 PM – 1:30 PM | Three’s Company: Navigating a shared ArchivesSpace instance |
| 1:30 PM – 2:00 PM | Touch a Truck for College Students: Using Casual Interaction to Increase Student Confidence and Use of Archival Materials |
| 2:00 PM – 2:15 PM | Afternoon Break |
| 2:15 PM – 2:45 PM | Engaging in Collaborative Learning through the Community Webs NY Cohort |
| 2:45 PM – 3:15 PM | Processing as Care: Ethical Stewardship and Inclusive Description in Archival Practice |
| 3:15 PM – 3:20 PM | Closing Remarks |
Program Schedule Details
9:30 AM-10:30 AM: Opening Remarks and Keynote
The New York Archives Conference welcomes you to our 2026 Virtual Conference! We are pleased to once again offer our conference virtually and are grateful to our presenters and attendees for their willingness to participate in this format.
Keynote – The Temporary Archive: Processing and Placing the Margaret Morton Estate
Since 2023, Stephanie Neel has been managing the estate of photographer and educator Margaret Morton. In the 1990s, while Morton was living in the East Village and teaching at Cooper Union, she began photographically documenting and recording oral histories with unhoused communities throughout the city as they were forcibly displaced by local government authorities. Her photographs of people and their homes — all shot in black and white on a medium-format camera — reveal a history of New York City and the struggle for housing rights that is still so prominent today.
The vision for this archive is unique insofar as they do not intend to manage the archive in perpetuity or establish an artist’s foundation. Instead, a small team of archivists and curators are working to process, digitize, catalog, and place the collection within a cultural institution, after which they will sunset the temporary archive. Along the way, they have made connections with various organizations supporting creative work with the archive, including a recent exhibit curated in partnership with Interference Archive about the squatters’ movement in NYC from the late 1980s through the early 2000s. The work of finding a home for each part of Morton’s estate, working with galleries/museums/community archives, and managing the transfer of copyright has been an informative journey that Stephanie is excited to share with the NYAC audience.
PRESENTER
Stephanie Neel (she/her/hers) is an archivist and archival consultant based in Brooklyn, NY. Her current work focuses on the development and management of artists’ estates in the fields of documentary, fashion, and performing arts photography, as well as special projects in archival storytelling, digital preservation, and rights management. Since 2017, Stephanie has managed the archive at the Mark Morris Dance Group, and previously worked with photography and performing arts collections at SITI Company, Art + Commerce, and the Byrd Hoffman Foundation. She is currently the archivist for the Margaret Morton Archive, and is supervising the processing, research, and institutional placement of photographer and professor Margaret Morton’s archive. Stephanie is the current President of Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, and has served on the committees for Dance/USA’s Archives and Preservation affinity group and the Performing Arts section of Society of American Archivists. Stephanie received her Bachelor of Arts at Barnard College in 2010 and a Masters in Library and Information Science at Pratt Institute in 2015.
10:30 AM – 10:45 AM: Morning Break
10:45 AM – 11:15 AM: A Tree Before Forest Approach: Updating the Policies and Procedures of the New York Botanical Garden Archives
Many archivists find themselves working with collections that have received little to no archival intervention or that reflect years of questionable practices handed down by predecessors. While this can feel daunting, it also presents an opportunity to develop policies and procedures that strengthen the archival program and improve access to collections. Drawing on lessons learned at the New York Botanical Garden Archives over the past year, Ashley Aberg and Nicole Font will discuss strategies for developing and implementing the policies and procedures necessary to carry out the day-to-day work of an archival program. Taking a “trees before the forest” approach, they will explore how individual projects led to the creation of collection-wide policies and procedures, with a focus on archival processing, archival description, and location management.
PRESENTERS
Ashley Aberg (she/her/hers), The New York Botanical Garden
Nicole Font (she/her/hers), The New York Botanical Garden
11:15 AM – 11:45 AM: One does not simply digitize all the things: Two case studies in digitizing oversized items at Cornell University Library
Oversized items can be extremely difficult to digitize, often requiring staff to develop innovative methods to support and capture images of the objects. The cultural and/or religious significance of the objects can add further limitations around handling and accessing the materials, requiring more planning and consulting with knowledgeable parties to complete this work. Cornell University Library staff want to share their planning and execution of two digitization projects. One required them to create new techniques for imaging cloth paintings that were larger than 7.5 ft by 7.5 ft and the other involved digitizing a Torah Scroll that was roughly 2.5 ft by 119 ft. The planning includes respectful handling, imaging, quality control, inclusive description, and digital preservation.
PRESENTER
Tabitha Cary (she/her/hers), Cornell University
11:45 AM – 1:00 PM: Lunch Break
1:00 PM – 1:30 PM: Three’s Company: Navigating a shared ArchivesSpace instance
Cornell University Library (CUL) contains three separate archival repositories: the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC) and the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives, located in Ithaca, NY, and the Medical Center Archives of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine (MCA), located in New York City. In January 2019, RMC implemented ArchivesSpace as their content management system; the Kheel Center and MCA have partially migrated into CUL’s ArchivesSpace instance. This presentation will address the challenges and opportunities of sharing an ArchivesSpace instance, the lessons learned during the migration and after, and future plans. Topics covered will focus on shared governance, the importance of community support, the creation of a community of practice, the diversity of technical challenges based on the systems migrated out of and the quality of data in them, advocacy and how having many voices has elevated awareness of archival needs.
PRESENTERS
Elizabeth Parker (she/her/hers), Cornell University
Katerina Dimitriadou-Shuster (she/her/hers), Cornell University Library
Chiyong (Tali) Han (she/her/hers), New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine
1:30 PM – 2:00 PM: Touch a Truck for College Students: Using Casual Interaction to Increase Student Confidence and Use of Archival Materials
Undergraduate students are often intimidated by the idea of visiting archives and interacting with materials. Whether it be a fear of breaking something, lack of knowledge about what archives are, or a sense that they “don’t belong”, undergraduate students at SUNY Maritime College weren’t coming to the archives. Taliesin will talk about the use of mid-day archives open houses to form casual interaction and engagement opportunities for students, and the impact these events have had.
PRESENTER
Taliesin Gamache (they/them/theirs), SUNY Maritime College
2:00 PM – 2:15 PM: Afternoon Break
2:15 PM – 2:45 PM: Engaging in Collaborative Learning through the Community Webs NY Cohort
In this panel presentation, representatives from the Community Webs NY Cohort will present an overview of the project and provide updates on their own organizational projects supported by this program. The Cohort brings together individuals from cultural heritage organizations across NYS to participate in collaborative learning through the Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. This program is offered by the Internet Archive’s Community Webs team in partnership with the Documentary Heritage and Preservation Services for New York (DHPSNY) program and support from the NYS Archives and NYS Library. In the spring of 2026 this cohort will complete a professional development program focused on preserving and providing access to local history through web archiving, digital preservation, and community archiving. Participants will then begin implementing projects for their organization, with supported access to Archive-It and Vault services and mentorship from the Community Webs team.
PRESENTER
Amanda Murray (she/her/hers), Documentary Heritage and Preservation Services for New York (DHPSNY)
2:45 PM – 3:15 PM: Processing as Care: Ethical Stewardship and Inclusive Description in Archival Practice
This presentation explores archival processing as a practice of care, grounded in inclusive descriptive practices and ethical stewardship. Beginning with the archival intake as a “farewell threshold,” where records cross into a new realm of identity and custody, this talk examines how processing, provenance, and descriptive choices shape collective memory. Drawing on examples from the Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University Library, it highlights the importance of documenting provenance and using tools as inclusive descriptions to support communities whose histories are often fragile or suppressed. By connecting physical and intellectual processing, restrictions, and preservation concerns to broader questions of power and representation, this presentation considers how archivists approach their work with intention, awareness, and with what Dr. Jennifer Douglas calls “institutional love”, a motivating force embedded in archival practice.
PRESENTER
Eirva (Eirini Vasiliki) Diamessis (she/her/hers), Cornell University Library