Privacy Policy
The Bibliographical Society of America (“BSA,” “Society,” “we,” “us,” and “our”) respects individual privacy and values the confidence of our members, program participants, and our community. This Privacy Policy sets out the privacy principles that we follow with respect to the collection, use, and disclosure of information that you may provide through the BSA’s website, bibsocamer.org and bibsite.org (our “website”), as well as through other channels, such us through our social media pages and at our events you may attend.
Please read this entire Privacy Policy before using BSA’s website or submitting information to BSA.
Contact Details
If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Policy and our practices regarding information you provide to us. Please contact the BSA Executive Director by email at executive.director@bibsocamer.org
BSA’s Mission Purpose; Legitimate Interests
BSA is an international, interdisciplinary scholarly organization that fosters the study of books and other textual artifacts in traditional and emerging formats. BSA pursues this mission by hosting public programs, funding scholarly research, issuing publications, and collaborating with related organizations and institutions. As such, any information we collect serves to further our mission, including but not limited to the following:
Provide relevant information to our potential members, active members, and the public
Respond to inquiries relating to the BSA
Promote and administer BSA events, programs, and activities
Perform our contractual obligations with members in good standing, registered attendees at our events, and subscribers of our publications and other products/services
Information We Collect About You; Purposes
You can access some areas of the website without submitting any information to us. However, if you wish to access additional content available on this website or participate in some of BSA’s activities, we may ask that you provide us with personally identifiable information/personal data for the following purposes:
join the BSA as a member or renew your membership
register for a BSA event
submit papers and proposals to BSA
apply for BSA fellowships and awards
purchase items through BSA’s online store
subscribe to the BSA’s newsletter/publication
create a website account to access member-only content
donate to the BSA
contact BSA
It is necessary for BSA to collect your personal data in order to conduct the programs and activities consistent with the intended purposes.
Personal Data That You Voluntarily Provide to Us. BSA only collects personal data you voluntarily submit to BSA. The types of personal data we collect vary based on the programs, services, and products you wish to engage in, but generally include your name, contact information, email address, postal address, your professional field, institutional affiliation, and credit card information. The full name and institutional affiliation of BSA officers, council & committee members, as well as recipients of BSA fellowship and award winners will be published on BSA’s website.
When you join BSA as a member or renew your membership, the membership application may ask additional, optional questions about you so that BSA leadership can tailor the Society’s dues structure, programs, and publications to a diverse community of bibliographers; these optional questions include your age, gender, race and ethnicity, and annual income. Response to optional questions listed on the membership application will remain confidential and used internally by BSA staff, council, officers, committee members, and authorized contractors.
Automatically Collected Data. When you visit the website, we collect and store certain other information automatically that may not identify you personally:
Internet Protocol (IP) address. An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to the computer you are using whenever you access the Internet.
Type of browser and operating system used to access our website
Date and time you access our website
The pages on our website that you access
We use the foregoing information in the form of summary statistics to help us make our website more useful to our visitors, such as assessing what information is of most and least interest.
How We Use Information
We will use the information you provide to us in order to carry out BSA’s mission purpose and relevant programs and activities, to fulfill our contractual obligations, and for internal use (by BSA staff, board/committee members, and consultants) such as performing marketing studies, research projects, and program development in support of BSA’s mission purposes.
There may be times when we share de-identified, aggregate information—such as the number of hits per page—with consulting business partners in an effort to customize or enhance the content on the website for our users.
How We Share and Disclose Information
We do not share, sell, or rent information to any third-party processors for their promotional use or for marketing purposes except in the following circumstances:
BSA Agents/Selected Vendors: your personal information may be used within BSA or by a company acting as an agent of BSA for operational support purposes, including but not limited to event registration, fellowship application management, content management and analysis, system maintenance, email distribution, printing, and mailing. BSA agents and selected vendors are obligated to process personal data according to the contracted purpose and implement appropriate safeguards in connection with such data processing.
BSA Business Partners and Affiliates: BSA may share contact information for ONLY individuals who have opted-in to receive messages from carefully selected business partners and affiliates whose products and services may be of interest to our members and community. All BSA business partners and affiliates are obligated to implement opt-out mechanisms and honor any opt-out requests by recipients in compliance with applicable laws.
BSA Conference/Meeting Attendee list: The list of BSA conference and meeting registrants, including the attendees contact information provided as part of registration, is provided for one-time use to authorized exhibitors for that one conference/meeting. Attendees may opt-out of being included on the foregoing list at the time of registration.
Links provided on BSA e-newsletters: For our electronic newsletters or communication that we send to our members and subscribers, BSA and its selected consulting partners may track whether a recipient subsequently clicks through to links provided in the message and collect specific information such as: email address of a user, the date and time of the user’s “click,” a message number, name of the list from which the message was sent, tracking URL number and destination page. BSA and its consulting partners may use this information to customize profiles for our members in order to enhance our products and their distribution to our members.
When you terminate your membership or cancel the website account access, BSA may continue to share information about you according to our legal and regulatory requirements.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, BSA may disclose your personal information as required by law or as needed in legal proceedings when BSA believes in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request.
In addition, in the event of a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale or transfer of some or all of our assets to a third party, we may also disclose your personal information to the third parties concerned or their professional advisors. In the event of such a transaction, the personal information held by BSA will be among the assets subject to the transaction.
Credit Card Information
BSA does not disclose credit card information provided by its donors, members, and customers. When donations and membership dues payments are made online through credit card, BSA submits the information needed through its secure online donation payment processor, Stripe, a payment gate site that is PCI-certified.
Communications From BSA/How to Update Preferences
Except for transactional emails necessary to perform BSA’s contractual obligations, we will not send you promotional information without your consent. All BSA members automatically receive The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (“PBSA”) in print and electronic formats, but members may elect to receive PBSA in electronic format only. BSA members also have the option to opt-in or opt-out of being included in the BSA Membership Directory. BSA members can customize their preference when joining and renewing their membership with BSA. Members may modify their preferences by sending requests to executive.director@bibsocamer.org.
How to Access, Correct, and Delete Information
You may access, correct, or delete your personal information by contacting BSA at executive.director@bibsocamer.org. In addition, you may request a copy of the information BSA holds about you so you can correct or amend information that may be inaccurate or incomplete by contacting us at executive.director@bibsocamer.org. We may ask you to provide sufficient evidence of your identity for your own protection so we can ensure that information is being released to the correct person. We will respond to your request to access your information within 30 days.
In some cases, our business requirements and legal obligations may prevent us from being able to delete your information. If we are unable to delete your information, we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why.
Children’s Information
The website is not intended for children under 13 years of age. BSA does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 years of age. If BSA discovers that a child under the age of 13 has provided us with personal data, we will delete the child’s personal data unless a parent or guardian provides verifiable consent to BSA.
Security Measures
The website has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under BSA’s control. When you enter sensitive information (such as a credit card number) as part of the purchase process, we encrypt the transmission of that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL).
When you submit information to BSA through our website, you should be aware that your information is transmitted across the Internet and that no method of transmission over the Internet is 100% secure. Although we take reasonable security measures to protect your information when we receive it, you also need to ensure you take appropriate steps to protect your information.
International Website Access and Cross-Border Data Transfers
Our principal place of business is in the United States. If you are visiting the website from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States where our servers are located and BSA is based. In addition, information that BSA collects may be stored and processed in and transferred between any of the countries in which BSA operates to enable the use of the information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. You agree to such cross-border transfers of personal information.
EEA Residents Only
This section applies if you are an individual located in the European Union or European Economic Area (collectively “EEA”). Under the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation EU 2016/679) (also known as GDPR), you may have certain rights as a data subject. To request information about those rights, please send an email to executive.director@bibsocamer.org with “GDPR Request” in the subject line. In the email please describe, with specificity, the GDPR right you are requesting assistance with. Please note additional information may be requested prior to initiation of a request. Upon BSA’s completion of its review you will be notified if your request has been granted, denied, or exemptions apply.
Cookies and Analytics Data
“Cookies” are files that contain information created by a web server that can be stored on a user’s hard disk for future use. Some cookies (“session” cookies) expire and are automatically deleted when you close your browser, while others (“persistent” cookies) do not expire and are not automatically deleted. You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. However, if the user declines the attachment of any cookie, the user may not have access to the full benefits of the website.
We may use a web analytics service, such as Google Analytics, to record and analyze your activity on this website. The website or any such service may track your browsing across web sites that use the same service and may collect demographic data, including the type of computer or operating system, and the location of user. To provide website visitors more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics, Google has developed an Opt-out Browser add-on, which is available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/, to enable you to opt-out of Google’s programs.
Privacy Issues and Links to Other Sites
The website may contain links to other third-party websites that are not affiliated with BSA. BSA has no control over and is not responsible for the privacy policies or content of such sites.
Social Media Widgets
The website and newsletter may include social media features, such as the Twitter and LinkedIn buttons, that run on our website. These features may collect your Internet Protocol address and which page you are visiting on our website, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Site. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.
Amendments and Updates
BSA will occasionally update this Privacy Policy. Any changes to our Privacy Policy will be posted here so that users will know what information we gather, how we might use that information, and whether we will disclose it to anyone. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices and this Privacy Policy.
Effective Date: February 2023