DHPSNY Dialogues provide the framework and facilitation to explore the roles of antiracism, diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and justice to inform the policies, practices, and systems of New York’s collecting organizations. These interactive discussions are a great way to network with colleagues and are designed for anyone who works in or volunteers for a library, archive, museum, historical society, or history/culture site in New York State.
Collections for the Future of New York
DHPSNY antiracism programming in 2025 is focused on exploring opportunities and strategies for collecting archival materials for the future of New York State. Our guiding question: What can we as practitioners in the field — both paid and volunteer — do to build and steward collections for the communities of tomorrow?
New York State is unique in the United States because of the history of the land we now consider our home. This land has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years by the Haudenosaunee and their ancestors. It has undergone multiple periods of colonization, played a pivotal role in the American Revolution, and continues to grapple with the legacy of chattel slavery. For over 400 years, it has also welcomed newcomers to North America and the United States. Since New Yorkers and our predecessors began collecting historical records, manuscripts, and published materials, we have interrogated “whose story” is represented, often with varying levels of critical analysis.
2025 Dialogues follow a hybrid format, with each session kicking off with a 30-45 minute recorded mini webinar, followed by an engaging 45–60 minute live conversation with Q&A, hosted on Zoom.
Upcoming Programs
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Getting Started with Participatory and Community Archiving
Date: Thursday, May 8, 2025
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Click here to register
Participatory and community archiving work empowers organizations to collaborate with communities to preserve their unique stories and histories. This approach helps ensure that collections reflect the lived experiences and perspectives of those they represent. This interactive program invites participants to an overview of participatory and community archiving. Discussion will include strategies for getting started or building on the work your organization has done, as well as opportunities to hear from practitioners in the field about community and participatory archiving at their organizations.
Climate Resilience & Sustainability: Collections Care for the Future
Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Click here to register
New York State is a diverse landscape inclusive of coastal waterways, freshwater lakes and streams, glacial drumlins, mountains, and much more. In the past 50 years, New York State has seen average temperatures rise and extreme weather events happen more frequently, with different regions of our state experiencing these extremes disproportionately. This interactive program invites participants to consider what environmentally responsible collections stewardship and care look like in the 21st century, with a focus on climate resilience. In this interactive session, we’ll take a look at what it means to manage our own organizations’ climate footprint as well as preparing for the types of weather emergencies we experience in New York State. Topics for discussion include exploring the types of climate change we are experiencing in New York State and identifying strategies to prepare our organizations and collections for a future where climate resilience and sustainability will be required.
Stewardship & Transparency: Repatriation in NY
Date: Thursday, September 4, 2025
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Click here to register
Archival repatriation considers the return of cultural materials and archival records to the indigenous communities who created them. The federal and state laws that surround repatriation can be difficult to understand and operationalize, particularly for under-resourced organizations. This interactive program invites participants to grapple with the legal and moral realities of repatriation while developing an outline for beginning or continuing their repatriation work. Strategies for communicating about your organization’s repatriation efforts will also be discussed.
Arrangement & Description for Future Communities
Date: Thursday, October 9, 2025
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Click here to register
The language we use as a community and a collections sector continually evolves. We use certain language until directly represented people and communities offer better language to describe experiences and materials. In so doing, no term, phrase, or vocabulary is evergreen, and our organizations (and the people who power them) need ways to indicate and invite flexibility in arrangement and description of the collections that will live long after we have left our desks. In our final antiracism program for 2025, we invite participants to think about how we talk about the stuff we steward - keywords, descriptions, harmful language, reparative language, and more. This interactive program creates space to discuss how language has and might change over time, how practitioners in the field handle this now, and what we can do to plan for flexible, relevant description in the future.
View or Download the New York State Office of Cultural Education's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Toolkit.
Past Programming
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2025
Understanding Our Changing Communities (January 9, 2025)
In our inaugural Dialogue of 2025, we explored different ways to collect and use existing demographic, economic, and historical data to inform collection development. Participants heard from practitioners in the field about their experiences and how they have used data in creative ways to plan for future collecting that reflects the realities of their communities.
Read a summary and view additional resources | Watch the recording
2024
Inspired by the AASLH Making History at 250 Field Guide and the New York State 250th Field Guide, our focus for 2024 programming revolved around building an inclusive 250th and the guiding question: "How do we make our collecting organizations interdisciplinary and representative of the realities of our many New York histories?"
Explore Local, Statewide, and National 250th Commemoration Initiatives.
Unfinished Revolutions: Telling Complete and Inclusive Stories (November 14, 2024)
In our final Dialogue of the year, “Unfinished Revolutions: Telling Complete and Inclusive Stories,” we invited participants to explore revolutionary moments in our local histories that bridge the gap between our collective past and current experiences.
Read a summary and view additional resources | Watch the recording
Changing Interpretations (September 12, 2024)
In September, DHPSNY examined how historical documents—such as New York’s treaties with Indigenous communities—can reshape our understanding of identity and history. Facilitators Aria Camaione-Lind and Dr. Michael Leroy Oberg guided participants through an exploration of collections from non-Eurocentric perspectives, shedding light on how historical records have been interpreted differently over time and offering strategies for uncovering deeper insights into our communities' pasts.
Read a summary and view additional resources | Watch the recording
Pursuing Untold Stories of Everyday Experiences (July 11, 2024)
In our July Dialogue, "Pursuing Untold Stories of Everyday Experiences," we explored how to uncover and address under-told, ignored, and poorly documented histories. Exploring structures for holding conversations involving different perspectives, we discussed how cultural institutions can either perpetuate or challenge harmful narratives.
Read a summary and view additional resources | Watch the recording
Placemaking and Place-Based Commemorations (May 11, 2024)
In May, co-facilitators invited us to consider some of the foundational knowledge we need in order to grapple with placemaking and placed-based commemorations, including the complexity of Indigenous history in what is now New York State and North America, the dearth of information taught to schoolchildren and older students about Indigenous histories, differences in how European colonizers and Indigenous communities understood land ownerships, and other important cultural norms and mores, and how we can understand placemaking as a matter of perspective.
Read a summary and view additional resources | Watch the recording
Intersectionality and the 250th (March 14, 2024)
In March, we delved into the intricacy of New York's past, focusing on the intersectional stories of "We the People" and the ongoing American Experiment within the context of the 250th commemoration and beyond in "Intersectionality and the 250th."
Read a summary and view additional resources | Watch the recording
Indigenous History is New York’s History (February 1, 2024)
In February, we inaugurated our "Building an Inclusive 250th" Dialogue series with a compelling session, "An Introduction to the NYS Field Guide and Indigenous History in New York’s History."
Read a summary and view additional resources | Watch the recording
2023
Northern Slavery Collective: A Framework for Inclusive History (November 9, 2023)
During our November Dialogue, “Northern Slavery Collective: A Framework for Inclusive History,” we had the chance to learn more about the Northern Slavery Collective from two member organizations: Dyckman Farmhouse Museum Alliance in Manhattan and Westport Museum of History and Culture in Westport, CT.
Read a summary and view additional resources.
Antiracist Approaches to Collections Accessibility (September 14, 2023)
This July Dialogue discussed effective strategies for describing our organization's collections and ways to center the perspectives, knowledge, and understanding of directly impacted groups of people.
Read a summary and view additional resources | Watch the recording
Describing Our Collections: Indigenous Art and Artifacts (July 13, 2023)
In this program, we engaged collecting organizations in conversations about their current and future approaches to describing their collections. While some are already working on metadata remediation and reparative description, many are just beginning to explore how to describe their collections for the public.
Native Experiences and Perspectives in non-Native-led Organizations (May 11, 2023)
This month we explored the relationships between non-Native-led museums, archives and libraries, and contemporary Native makers, artists, academics, and researchers.
Read a summary and view additional resources
Antiracism from the Indigenous Perspective: Practical Applications (March 9, 2023)
In this program, we took a look at practical opportunities to center indigenous voices, experiences, and perspectives in collections, programming, and community engagement.
Watch the recording
Centering Indigenous Experience and Perspectives, and Understanding Slavery in New York State (January 12, 2023)
The guiding question for this Dialogue asked: How do collecting organizations build from the indigenous perspective?
Read a summary and view additional resources
2022
An Introduction to Antiracist Policies (September 8, 2022)
In this presentation, co-facilitators Aria Camaione-Lind and Meredith Horsford used the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum Alliance as a case study to explore organizational policy that yields antiracist results.
Watch the recording
Understanding Antiracism as Collecting Organizations (March 10, 2022)
This presentation covered the basics of what anti-racism is, how we talk about it, its history, and how we can use the principles of anti-racism to create more robust and engaging organizations.
Watch the recording
Our Role as Collecting Organizations (January 13, 2022)
Our very first Dialogue focused on creating a baseline for discussion about antiracism, inclusion, and making sense of diversity, equity, accessibility, and justice in our field of archives, libraries, and all kinds of historical collecting organizations.
Read a summary and view additional resources
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View the Antiracism Resources Blog series - Previous to the Dialogues program series, these blog posts were created to share information and promote resources in hopes of fostering discussion among collecting institutions in New York.