Preserve, Adapt, Endure: Building Resilient State and Territorial Archives
The Council of State Archivists (CoSA) is pleased to announce its third independently hosted annual meeting for state and territorial archivists and archives staff. Our annual meeting provides a dynamic opportunity to share work, exchange ideas, and engage in conversations around issues unique to our community.
This year's theme centers on resilience. Recent years have brought many challenges to state and territorial archives. We invite you to contemplate how your institution has faced adversity and come through it in ways that demonstrate our professional dedication to preservation, our ability to adapt, and our resilience in the face of large-scale challenges. Consider proposals that can provide other state or territorial archives with guidance for how to overcome a pressing issue and build stronger practices on the other side.
Please note that proposals do NOT have to align with the conference theme, so please feel free to submit any session that you see fit for potential inclusion in this year’s program. Some potential session topics include but are not limited to:
- Managing staffing shortages and staff turnover
- Navigating inadequate resources, like budget shortfalls or infrastructure challenges
- Archiving social media and webpages in a shifting environment
- The use (and pitfalls) of AI in archival settings
- Balancing access and confidentiality
- Successful partnerships with underrepresented/disadvantaged groups/collections without burdening that group
- Psychology through archives
- Unconventional archives or records management outreach
- Reparative description and its implementation
New for 2026
In addition to standard sessions, as part of the America 250 celebrations this year, CoSA will offer a reception and poster session where states and territories can showcase projects and products created as part of their America 250 commemoration efforts. Consider this CoSA’s postmortem on America 250 to serve as inspiration for future commemorations and anniversaries. Poster sessions are an excellent opportunity to break into the conference presentation space in a more casual environment. You may submit a proposal for the America 250 poster session in addition to a standard session proposal.
We strongly encourage you to partner with other state or territorial archives to collaborate on building a session proposal. Please use this Google Sheet if you’d like to collaborate on a session.
The deadline for submissions is March 31, 2026. Please use the "Submit Your Proposal" button below to submit your proposal electronically. If you plan to submit more than one proposal, complete a new submission for each idea.
Proposals for sessions and posters should include:
- Presenter(s) name, job title, institution/organization, and email address
- Title of proposed session/poster
- Brief (50-250 word) abstract to be used in the meeting program
- Preferred format (select all that apply): presentation, panel, lightning talk, roundtable, workshop, poster session, mini work session on a specific topic/question, or other (please specify)
- Preferred length of presentation (poster session, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, or 1 hour)
Notifications of acceptance will go out by early May.