MENU

This year, we are thrilled to provide attendees with Friday and Saturday full breakfast, Saturday lunch, and Friday dinner. Peruse the menu ahead of time.

WORKSHOPS

Please note that workshop registration is separate from meeting registration and that onsite registration will NOT be available for workshops; attendees must register in advance. Registration closes on March 13, 2026 for all workshops. Please contact the Education Committee at education@newenglandarchivists.com with any questions about workshops.

Workshop (Virtual) - Modern Copyright for Archives and Libraries
Date: Thursday March 19, 2026
Time: 9:30am - 12:00pm
Location: Zoom
Instructor: Kyle K. Courtney, Esq., Harvard University

Description: This half-day workshop provides archivists and librarians with a practical, scenario-based introduction to copyright issues encountered in archives, special collections, and library settings. Drawing from the national Copyright First Responders curriculum, the session will focus on real-world applications involving unpublished materials, donor agreements, audiovisual collections, fair use and Section 108 considerations. Emphasis will be placed on decision-making strategies for reference staff, archivists, and curators, including how to responsibly provide access, perform risk assessments, and communicate copyright and risk rationales. Participants will engage in collaborative problem-solving exercises and will come away with actionable tools for daily practice.

Register for this workshop (Modern Copyright for Archives and Libraries)

Workshop (Onsite) - Oral History: An Introduction
Date: Saturday March 21, 2026
Time: 8:30am - 11:00am
Location: Holiday Inn By the Bay
Instructor: Andy Kolovos, Vermont Folklife

Description: Taught by Andy Kolovos, Associate Director and Archivist of the Vermont Folklife, this workshop will explore the fundamentals of an ethnographic approach to oral history research using audio, including interviewing, audio recording and audio equipment basics, and will provide an overview of archival considerations and best practices for oral history materials. The workshop includes a demonstration interview and, as time allows, opportunity for participants to practice interviewing and recording in small groups.

Register for this workshop (Oral History: An Introduction)

Workshop (Onsite) - Leading Change in Archives: Foundational Practices
Date: Saturday March 21, 2026
Time: 9:00am - 10:30am
Location: Holiday Inn By the Bay
Instructor: Elizabeth Carron, Boston College

Description: This workshop reframes everyday archival work as change work: introducing new tools, rethinking policies, and responding to shifting expectations. Archivists often struggle to describe their work in terms of broader leadership skills like project or change management. After all, we tend to see ourselves as specialists in processing, metadata, and digital preservation. But archives are built on change—we adapt, plan for the long term, and help our donors and organizations navigate uncertainty. Together, we’ll explore practical frameworks for leading during times of change, apply them to real scenarios, and develop strategies for building buy-in even when we’re not in charge. Expect lively discussion, collaboration, and a few “aha” moments as we connect archival expertise to the language of leadership and change.

Register for this workshop (Leading Change in Archives: Foundational Practices)

PLENARY SPEAKER AND PLENARY PANEL

Friday Plenary Speaker

Saturday Plenary Panel

SESSION DESCRIPTIONS

Session 1 (Friday)

1.1 Tentative title: Collections Care
Speaker: Donia Conn
(Description forthcoming)

1.2 Professional Lightning Talks

1.2a Archives and Archaeology
Speaker: Kim Harris Thacker (she/her)

In an exciting “Introduction to Archaeology” course, taught in grades 11-12 at an all-girls’ boarding school in Connecticut, students conduct excavations–both authentic and “seeded”–under the supervision of their teacher, who is also the school archivist. The students utilize archival materials, such as photographs, building plans, and site maps, to plan their authentic dig and to research the artifacts that they discover in their excavation sites. Are you ready, folks? It’s time to don your gloves – leather work gloves instead of white cotton gloves, that is!

1.2b Collaborative Appraisal of College Archives: A Proposal without Practicality
Speaker: Eric Stoykovich

For the past two years, two retired/emeriti faculty members at my institution (Trinity College, Hartford, CT) have led an informal group seeking to insert faculty opinions and collective decision-making into the process of deciding what the College Archives should collect. They've not received much traction, and they perhaps should not, given the reality that collaborative appraisal of college archival materials is a rarely attempted and even more rarely accomplished feat. This talk will give the history of this group, strategies that the College Archives have deployed to steer the group into more supportive roles, and how the proposal hearkens back to the days of documentation strategies of the 1970s.

1.2c Let's Lead! Sustaining Your Archival Program Even When Your Funding Is Cut
Speaker: Janet Hauck (she/her)

“What, no archivist? What’s happened to [name]? I need information on / a photo of / my students need to do research / etc.” My institution is facing a challenge that may soon become a common sign of the times – we have been without an archivist for over two years now, with no immediate prospect of hiring a new one. Yet we have had an archival program since 2008, and there are internal and external expectations about information the University Archives can provide. As a former archivist currently serving as a subject librarian, I’ve taken on an additional role in this current moment, to help sustain the essentials of our archival program. All of our institutions have a role in keeping alive the history of the places we study and work; therefore, attendance at my presentation will be informative for any institution that has reduced staffing, or, like mine, is temporarily without an archivist. While bemoaning our challenges, let’s lead by being resilient and look for opportunities!

1.2d Leveraging and Adapting Student Archival Work
Speaker: Jordan Jancosek (she/her/hers)

In a profession with limited staff, it can be helpful for institutions to rely on student workers. However, this can often be a confusing and daunting endeavor for archivists. What projects are appropriate? Is the work too easy, or too complex? What amount of time and effort should be expected? If a student leaves halfway through a project, what then? This lightning talk will cover a variety of different examples of student-led work in archives, including short-term, long-term, varying levels of complication, and how panelists have worked through roadblocks that have presented themselves along the way. The talk will also include a brief Q and A at the end of the session.

1.3 Talking about Gender in Archives
Panelists: Thera Webb (she/her), Becca Tibbitts (she/they), Chris Tanguay (she/they), Elise Riley (she/her), Lisa Bravata (she/her)

Gender politics permeate both our day-to-day life and the historic record. How do we, as archivists, think about and describe gender in both biographical description and EAC-CPF agent records. While groups like the Program for Cooperative Cataloging recommend removing gender from authority records in cataloging, the needs of archives are different from those of libraries. Researchers are increasingly interested in the records of people whose lives may have been minimized, altered, or suppressed from the historical record or mainstream consciousness because of their gender, and there is a greater need than ever for archivists to thoughtfully and responsibly describe gender in finding aids, authority records, exhibit text, and elsewhere. In this roundtable discussion archivists from MIT, Yale and the Harvard College Observatory Plate Stacks will discuss how their repositories are addressing the issue of describing gender in collections and the changes and challenges that come with it.

Session 2 (Friday)

2.1 Consortium as Support Network: Finding Stability in Collaboration and Communication
Panelists: Jacob Albert (he/him), Kate Bradley (she/her), Keith Chevalier (he/him)

Franco American Collections Consortium is a collaboration of New England institutions that maintain vital collections of primary sources related to French-Canadian and Acadian heritage communities in the Northeast. We collaborate to unite resources, create educational materials, provide leadership, and promote Franco-American literacy among researchers, academics, and the public. This presentation by three active members of the Consortium will discuss the nature of their collaboration as a de facto support network in times of need. The presenters will foreground the Consortium's collaborative daily work in order to describe how–collectively–its members have not only survived federal grant termination, funding scarcity, physical relocation, multi-institutional project management, professional development, and more, but have been able to grow from these experiences through the strengthening bonds of their professional relationships and team network.

2.2 Sustainability, Advocacy, and Transparency in Public Services
Panelists: Molly Brown (she/her), Blake Spitz (she/her), Caroline J. White (she/her), Mimosa Shah (she/her), Angela DiVeglia (she/her), Brett Freiburger (he/him)

This session will address an important challenge in the archival field: how to best advocate and sustain public services work in a rapidly changing world of expectations and technologies. While public services roles often represent the most visible face of archival institutions to the public, the immense labor and expertise required to deliver quality reference, outreach, and instruction remains largely obscured and undervalued as “less technical” than other archival positions. Participants in the roundtable will bring unique viewpoints as public services practitioners addressing how to make the spectrum of public services labor more visible, the nuances of training and preparing archivists for public services, transitioning into a new public services position between very different institutions, and addressing what working with the public really means from the perspective of a panelist who previously worked in a public library prior to joining the archives field. Roundtable members will address the following questions in both their presentations and moderated discussion: what are the skills needed now for public services, what are the consequences of narrowing or broadening the scope of public services, and what are the most pressing needs of public services now and into the future?

2.3 Setting the Record Straight: Teaching Staff about Institutional Records
Panelists: Emily Atkins (she/her), Juliana Kuipers (she/her), Sarah Martin (she/her)

The Harvard University Archives has recently launched two new training offerings focused on the management and stewardship of institutional records. For the first time, the Archives is offering self-paced online training for all Harvard administrators, faculty, and staff. This course, created using the Articulate 360 Rise platform, introduces Harvard’s new records schedule interface and clarifies employees' responsibility in appropriately managing university records. By shifting to online training, we support diverse learning styles and foster a more inclusive, accessible environment—enabling staff to participate at their convenience and making use of enhanced accessibility features such as screen readers and audio transcription. We have also launched a modular, in-person series designed for archives and special collections staff working with institutional records, including processing, cataloging, or providing access to researchers and administrative users. Each module includes light pre-work, hands-on activities, and interactive discussions, giving staff opportunities to apply concepts using real-life examples. This session will provide an overview of the Archives' new online and in-person trainings, share opportunities and challenges that arose during development, and conclude with practical suggestions for colleagues interested in exploring similar offerings or new training modalities for staff audiences.

Session 3 (Friday)

3.1 [Tentative title] Cataloging with new technologies

3.1a [Tentative title] The Dartmouth Vietnam Project: Clearing a Digital Backlog with Tools Both Old and New
Speaker: Charlie Langenbucher (they/them)

The Dartmouth Vietnam Project (DVP) is an oral history project dedicated to documenting the experiences of members of the Dartmouth community during the Vietnam War era (1970-1975). Initiated in 2014 as a collaboration between the Dartmouth College Department of History and Rauner Special Collections Library, DVP has collected the stories of more than 175 Dartmouth alumni, faculty, staff, and local community residents, who shared their experiences as veterans, activists, witnesses, and survivors of the war. However, a gap in the project workflow led to a backlog of more than 100 oral histories that lacked essential documentation and/or basic elements of archival description, making them inaccessible to researchers. In this presentation, I will share how I tackled one part of the problem using a combination of old-fashioned Command Line scripting and generative artificial intelligence (AI). I will discuss how I used ExifTool to gain intellectual control of the materials by listing the files and their metadata, and basic commands to organize the files and rename them in a standardized way. I will also share how I used OpenAI's ChatGPT API to generate rough drafts of Scope & Content notes for a subset of oral histories. This will include discussion of ethical and practical considerations and my process for editing and fact-checking AI-generated descriptions. I will end with tips and takeaways for people interested in using these tools for their own digital backlogs.

3.2 Collections Management session
(Description forthcoming)

3.3 In the Reading Room: Tradition and Innovation

3.3a This Old Space: Reinventing the Reading Room for Low Stakes Engagement
Panelists: Marta Crilly (she/her), Amanda Ferrara (she/her), Kate Edrington (she/her)

Conversations about successful user engagement typically focus on policies, programming, relationship-building, and other actions taken by staff members. This conference panel shifts the focus away from staff interactions and explores creative, low-cost ways to make archives and special collections more welcoming through engaging, low-pressure physical spaces.
In the summer of 2025, after receiving feedback from university faculty, students, and other users, the Burns Library Public Services team began implementing a series of changes in our reading room and other public spaces. Our goal was to provide low stakes engagement opportunities for our users. This included a magnetic poetry board in their lobby, a series of touchable reading room exhibits, and reproductions of exhibit items that users could take home with them. This panel walks through the practical steps of creating and implementing these changes, reflecting on their successes (or failures!), and offers ideas for how these ideas could be implemented in other repositories operating in different contexts and with different constraints and audiences. These changes take place during a time of austerity and social and political pressures in the higher education and cultural heritage fields, and thus this panel will pay special attention to the challenge of operating within current institutional constraints. We will also explore user engagement as a form of advocacy and resilience.

3.3b Cultivating Connections: Supporting Student Community in the Archives
Panelists: Bailey Rodgers (she/her) and Deborah Kloiber (she/her)

Historically, archives and special collections reading rooms have been quiet spaces for individual study and research. However, in the contemporary era, professional literature has addressed the need for archives and special collections spaces in higher education to be more student-focused. The staff at the Linda Lear Center for Special Collections and Archives strive to instill into their teaching practices a sense of belonging and place that supports student community building on campus. Participants who come to this session will gain new perspectives on how archives can serve as active spaces for community building.

3.3c Reading Room Futures
Speaker: Rakashi Chand (she/her)

An Open Forum to discuss the current and future use of physical Reading Rooms, the changes we anticipate, providing access and balancing security and protection of collections. Let’s explore “best practices” together to share with our greater archival community and help others succeed in Reading Room Management by sharing policies, experiences and systems that work. What works in your archive? Where do you seek improvement or suggestions? How are you managing remote versus in person research? Let’s talk about what happens in the reading room from circulation, to sightlines, to digitally born restricted material access, to furniture and new ideas. Share a little and learn a little, it's all on the table in the reading room.

Session 4 (Saturday)

4.1 Student Lightning Talks

4.1a Is Discretion the Better Part of Valor?: Confidentiality in Activism and Archives
Speaker: Anastacia Markoe (she/her/hers)

The impetus for this proposal was precipitated by my stumbling upon the Boston Anti-Man-Hunting League’s digitized initiation procedures in the digital archive of the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS). In its manual for admission, the initiate was, and the contemporary researcher now is, immediately confronted with the following statement:

“Will you solemnly promise not to divulge or make known to any person or persons, by speaking, writing, printing in any manner, any knowledge which have acquired, or may acquire, concerning such League, excepting as you may be so permitted and authorized by said League?”

This collection’s material, including a complete description of the organization’s membership and its activities, is now made freely available online to anyone with access to the internet. That juxtaposition of former secrecy and current accessibility presents a fascinating contrast. It invites us to question according to what criteria, and on whose authority, archivists make public previously confidential information. It also presents the question of how our own monitoring of researchers, and the retention of records about their archival activities, may be viewed in the context of the field’s core values surrounding privacy and accessibility.

In this lighting talk, I propose to provide a brief overview of the on-the-ground experience of a current library assistant whose daily interactions with researchers includes communicating the MHS’s policies concerning privacy, confidentiality, and copyright law to individuals from a variety of ideological backgrounds and approaches.

My presentation will include the way in which the development of the MHS’s policies align with the SAA’s Core Values Statement and its Code of Conduct, while registering some of the challenges presented by implementing such policies in daily life.

Cognizant of the constraints presented by this short format, I will confine my presentation to the particular instance of the MHS, but I would like to note that this presentation is planned with the aim of developing it into a more extensive research project at a later date.

4.1b Surfacing FGLI Students in University Archives
Speaker: David Donnan (they/them)

As archives work to lead in this current moment, it is important to ground ourselves in a full understanding of the communities we serve. For university archives, one important and often overlooked community is first-generation and/or low-income (FGLI) students. Identifying records in university archives' collections related to FGLI students can be particularly challenging, since this terminology has come into use recently, primarily after 1990. However, these students have attended most colleges and universities since they were established. In this lightning talk, I will discuss strategies for finding records related to FGLI students in university records, as well as the importance of these records in contributing to belonging and success for FGLI students. This lightning talk is based on a Simmons University final paper for LIS 410: Information Services for Diverse User Groups, as well as work creating a research guide on FGLI students for the Harvard University Archives.

4.1c Archiving Environmental Justice: Original Order and Donor Impact on Processing
Speakers: Julia Lee (she/her), Aleks Renerts (he/him)

Our presentation will focus on our experience processing the records of the environmental justice non-profit, Alternatives for Community and Environment (aka ACE) which was founded in 1993 and is based in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The collection includes records from the early 1990s to the mid 2010s and is held at the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

The ACE records provide a detailed look into the landscape of environmental justice organizing from the 1990s to the present, especially considering the role of community-based activism and promoting environmental leadership. ACE was founded with the idea of providing pro-bono legal expertise to communities historically marginalized from the conversation about environmental justice. ACE collaborated with community groups to fight the establishment of urban asphalt plants and waste disposal facilities, the dumping of chemicals in waterways, and supported efforts to regulate air quality and protect communities’ quality of life. The records provide an on-the-ground view of grassroots environmental justice organizing in New England and contextualize ongoing environmental efforts.

Processing this collection has sparked conversations about local activism, the growth of the environmental justice movement, and the importance of an ongoing community dialogue. From an archival perspective, we hope that our processing work will allow researchers to better understand these issues and potentially inform future organizing. Making these records accessible will allow current members to familiarize themselves with the history of their organization, the challenges and victories of activism, and strategize for the future of environmental justice. Processing these records places archives and libraries into the conversation, and underlines our ability to support the research needs of diverse groups of users.

4.1d Merging the Historian and the Archivist: Creating a Subject Guide
Speaker: Hilde Perrin (she/her)

This presentation will explore the process of crafting a subject guide on materials related to the women’s suffrage movement at the Massachusetts Historical Society, blending the presenter’s dual roles as a library assistant at the Society and a graduate student in history. With a focus on the utilization of skills from both roles, the presentation will add to the conversation of how archivists can benefit from understanding researcher habits and consider how to anticipate user needs in our collections and reference work.

4.1e Legislators' Papers at the Massachusetts State House
Speakers: Charlsie Wemple (she/her), Erin Wood (she/her)

During our internship at the Massachusetts State Library Special Collections, we spent four months processing the papers of Newton legislator Lois Pines, who sponsored and passed landmark legislation such as the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and no-fault divorce. In our proposed presentation, we will discuss the steps we took to process this collection, the challenges we faced, and what we learned from the experience. The portion of the collection that we processed had been forgotten for over a decade, which emphasized to us how collections can be easily lost track of in large archives and the importance of clear organization. We will also talk about creating the finding aid and meeting Lois Pines, which introduced us to donor relations and demonstrated to us how working with a living donor can add a sense of urgency to a project and pose unique challenges. Furthermore, the opportunity to work with a collection of legislative materials that continue to impact our lives today underscored to us the importance of archival work in preserving our state’s history. Overall, this project has made us better archivists and exposed us to the many different aspects of archival work.

4.1e Legislators' Papers at the Massachusetts State House
Speakers: Charlsie Wemple (she/her), Erin Wood (she/her)

During our internship at the Massachusetts State Library Special Collections, we spent four months processing the papers of Newton legislator Lois Pines, who sponsored and passed landmark legislation such as the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and no-fault divorce. In our proposed presentation, we will discuss the steps we took to process this collection, the challenges we faced, and what we learned from the experience. The portion of the collection that we processed had been forgotten for over a decade, which emphasized to us how collections can be easily lost track of in large archives and the importance of clear organization. We will also talk about creating the finding aid and meeting Lois Pines, which introduced us to donor relations and demonstrated to us how working with a living donor can add a sense of urgency to a project and pose unique challenges. Furthermore, the opportunity to work with a collection of legislative materials that continue to impact our lives today underscored to us the importance of archival work in preserving our state’s history. Overall, this project has made us better archivists and exposed us to the many different aspects of archival work.

4.2 Unearthing “Storied Lives”: Building Resilient and Recontextualized Collections at UNH Library through Community Archives Collaborations
Panelists: Kai Uchida (he/they), Eleta Exline (she/her), Morgan Wilson (she/her)

A strength of the University Archives at the University of New Hampshire is its strong administrative and institutional history collections through the mid 20th century, with hundreds of linear feet of manuscripts from offices across campus. However, some of these collections were processed more than 30 years ago and are missing descriptive work that would ideally highlight communities of color on campus and their inclusion and self-advocacy in the history of higher education.

In the absence of resources that would prioritize reprocessing these collections, the University Archives has partnered with the Digital Collections Team at UNH to broaden the access to these unique collections in ways that not only recontextualize their content but also invite stewardship and stakeholdership to build resilient collections with cultural heritage institutions.

In this presentation, the panelists will discuss the early stages of a collaborative partnership with Densho, a Japanese-American community archives based out of Seattle, WA, to host a mirror collection of papers that reckon with a previously unknown history of Japanese American students applying to UNH during WWII. By taking descriptive queues from Densho, enriching their collections, and advocating for other schools in the Northeast to collaborate with them to address gaps in their collections, we hope to provide an example of how building resilience in archives can be conceived by not only broadening access, but also recontextualizing a set of institutional records in ways that reckon with a harmful past.

4.3 Documenting a Tragedy: The records of the Independent Commission to Investigate the Facts of the Tragedy in Lewiston at the Maine State Archives
Panelists: Kate Herbert (she/her) and Heather Moran (she/her)

The Independent Commission to Investigate the Facts of the Tragedy in Lewiston released its final report in August 2024 and the commission's files were organized and sent to the Maine State Archives. This collection raised new questions and challenges for the MSA staff, including issues related to confidentiality, harmful content, and accessibility. This presentation will address these questions and share some of the solutions that MSA found during the process.

Session 5 (Saturday)

5.1 The International Institute of Lowell Collection as a Lens into Individual Immigration Stories
Panelists: Carisa Kolias (she/her), Nikki Tantum (she/her), Connor Shaw (he/him)

The International Institute of Lowell was founded in 1918 by a group of local women at the YWCA and serves the diverse immigrant community of the city to this day. Their mission includes the following: "To promote the interests and understanding of the foreign-born peoples of greater Lowell; to apply the civic, social and legal resources of said Lowell in the state of Massachusetts to their protection and better orientation; to work for the conservation of the aesthetic values in the culture of every nationality..."

The Center for Lowell History at UMass Lowell holds a collection of the International Institute of Lowell's administrative records, client records, club records, and more from 1918-1999, totaling almost 200 linear feet. After archivist Nikki Tantum led a project to better arrange and describe the collection we began considering how we could better encourage researcher and student engagement. To that end, in spring 2024, archivist Carisa Kolias designed a fellowship with UMass Lowell's Honors College using the collection. Connor Shaw, now a Sophomore English major, was awarded a yearlong fellowship to conduct research and design a digital exhibit. The project uses client files from the International Institute collection, supplemented by outside resources, to highlight the individual immigrant stories of Armenian families who arrived in Lowell in the wake of the Armenian genocide and were assisted by the International Institute.

Come learn about this amazing collection full of immigrant stories, how we have taken a collection that was collecting dust in the back of the archives and turned it into one we constantly turn to in the course of our work. Maybe you have a collection that could be similarly resurrected?

5.2 Case Studies on Restrictions in the Archives
Panelists: Sarah Shepherd (she/her), Linda Woodland (she/her), Mik Hamilton (they/any pronouns), Krista Ferrante (she/her)

The panel is a set of case studies and discussion on how various institutions handle restrictions to access for their collections, especially when so much of archival work is meant to increase access. Included are case studies from three institutions: a museum archive, a community archive, and a corporate archive. The Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library has a close but independent relationship with the Scottish Rite Masons, which led to creating restrictions on access to their rituals, a policy that extends to the rituals of other fraternal organizations in the collection. The History Project is developing restriction policies that promote access and visibility while balancing safety for LGBTQ+ collections. MITRE has a very restrictive environment because of contracts with the federal government, classified and proprietary information, and release restrictions. Following the presentations we will engage in a guided discussion with the audience.

5.3 The Resilient Archivist: Strategies to Support Self-Care and Self-Advocacy
Panelists: Katy Sternberger (she/her), Kim Harris-Thacker (she/her), Elizabeth M. Peters (any), Brett Freiburger (he/him), Kylie Hargrove (she/her)

Resilience of the archives profession depends on the resilience of archivists. Strength comes from taking care of oneself and one another—because we are human beings first, archivists second. This session includes presentations from panelists who will address self-care and self-advocacy in the archives while handling life’s demands, such as managing chronic health issues, supporting interns who might encounter uncomfortable materials, coping with grief, and balancing caretaking and work. Panelists will then lead a discussion among attendees about their experiences with asking for accommodations, implementing social change in the workplace, and putting radical empathy into action. We will encourage the participation of students and new professionals during this discussion. The objective of this session is to learn from one another how to cultivate and sustain resilient archivists.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Create and Consider
It’s hard to have the bandwidth to propose a conference session, organize participants, and put together a presentation (which may not be something that you can repurpose) under ordinary circumstances. As these are not ordinary times and very little of what is happening around us feels normal, let's have a different kind of session. Think of it as self-care while discussing difficult topics. We will gather in small groups to knit, crochet, cross stitch, fidget,doodle, color, or whatever you like while we talk about the questions in the call for proposals. We will create while we consider how our institutional and situational realities are impacting us and what opportunities we see to make a difference in our communities. NOTE: Small group leaders will bring extra supplies for those who may not have a project with them.

IDC Reading Circle
Join the Inclusion and Diversity Committee for a lively discussion on recent scholarship on diversity retention and general survival in the archival field at this current moment.

All Attendee Reception
Friday, March 15 | 5:30 pm

Come join your colleagues, friends, and peers for a lively reception! Full dinner provided (see menu).

ACCOMMODATIONS

Our group rate for the Spring 2026 Meeting at the Holiday Inn by the Bay is $149 per night and is available from Thursday, March 19, 2024 – Saturday, March 21, 2026. Please note that the last day to make reservations at the group rate is February 19, 2026.

Book your group rate for New England Archivists 2026

DIRECTIONS

Directions from Portland Transportation Center to the Holiday Inn by the Bay:

Busses and trains arrive at the Portland Transportation Center. Out front you will find a steady supply of taxis, Uber and Lyft are available as well.

Greater Portland Metro busses are also available from the transportation center. Bus route #1 will take you down Congress Street to the Congress St. and Park St. stop. The hotel is a 5 minute walk from the bus stop. Continue down Congress St. one block, turn right onto High St. After one block turn left onto Spring St. The Holiday Inn by the Bay will be on the right.

Directions from Portland International Jetport to the Holiday Inn by the Bay:

Ground transportation options from Portland Jetport are available, as well as taxis, Uber, Lyft and rental cars. Greater Portland Metro bus #7 picks up at the jetport. It is an approximately 30 minute ride to the bus stop at Congress St. and Park St. The hotel is a 5 minute walk from the bus stop. Continue down Congress St. one block, turn right onto High St. After one block turn left onto Spring St. The Holiday Inn by the Bay will be on the right.

Driving directions from south of Portland:

From 95 North take exit 44 for 295 North Downtown Portland. From 295 take exit 4 Commercial St., Casco Bay Bridge. Travel over Veterans’ Memorial Bridge and continue onto Commercial St. Continue on Commercial St. and take a left onto High St. and a right onto Spring St. The Holiday Inn by the Bay will be on the right.

Driving directions from north of Portland:

From 295 South take exit 6A Forest Ave South. Staying in the right-hand lane turn right onto State St. Continue on State St. over the hill. Turn left onto Spring St. The Holiday Inn by the Bay will be on the right.

From 95 South take exit 53 rt 26 / 100 Falmouth Cumberland. At the end of the ramp turn right onto rt 100 / Auburn St. Continue on Auburn St which will turn into Washington Ave. Washington Ave will merge onto 295 South. Take 295 South to exit 6A Forest Ave South. Staying in the right-hand lane turn right onto State St. Continue on State St. over the hill. Turn left onto Spring St. The Holiday Inn by the Bay will be on the right.

PARKING

Hotel Parking Information and Rates:
— Overnight guests can park under the hotel for $15 per vehicle, per night with unlimited in and out privileges
— Day guests can park in the external garage for $10 per vehicle, per day with one in and out
— Day guests who park under the hotel will be subject to full day parking prices

Limited street parking is available. Parking meters are in effect from 9 am to 6 pm, Monday through Saturday. Sundays and Major Holidays are free. The Passport Parking mobile app is available city-wide at all metered spaces. The rate for most parking meters is $2 per hour. However, the rate for parking in the area bounded by Middle St, Pearl St, Commercial St and Union St, as well as the entire length of Commercial St itself, will be $2.50 per hour. Vehicles with disability plates or placards do not have to pay parking meter fees at street meters and can stay for twice the posted time per state law.

Other Parking: Downtown Portland Parking Garage and Maps