BSA Members: Discounted Library Access for Print & Digital Resources

June 27, 2022

The BSA recognizes that independent scholars, precariously employed academics, and booksellers need research resources and services beyond what most public libraries can offer. Working with the Society Library, we crafted a special option for members of the BSA offering access to electronic resources; Interlibrary Loan services; 10 building visits per year, including access to most member-only spaces; and access to expert reader’s advisory and reference services, all at a cost of $170 per year.

Join a short virtual information session with NYSL staff on July 22, 4pm Eastern! We will record the conversation and post it to the BSA YouTube Channel.

BSA Leadership values your feedback, and hope that you will let us know how we can improve this benefit to make it more accessible and relevant to your research needs. Email the BSA office with you comments at bsa@bibsocamer.org.

About the Society Library

The New York Society Library holds a growing collection of nearly 300,000 volumes and remotely-accessible electronic resources with an emphasis on the humanities. Strengths include fiction and literature, biography, U.S. and European history, travel, and New York City history and culture. Members in the NYC area can browse and borrow books from the library’s eight open stacks; those farther afield can borrow books by mail for a small fee. As the oldest cultural institution in New York City, the Society Library has been collecting since 1754 and remarkably holds many books in early or otherwise noteworthy editions, many of which continue to circulate. For all those interested in the material history of books, the Library’s physical collections are a tremendous resource for research, while also supporting reading for pleasure. The Library’s Special Collections and digital offerings are valuable for scholarly research, as well.

All NYSL members have remote and on-site access to NYSL’s electronic resources, including JSTOR, Project Muse, The Chicago Manual of Style, Oxford English Dictionary, The London and New York Reviews of Books, and the TLS archive. The ebooks and audiobooks collection offers over 2,000 titles from classics to today’s bestsellers. Overdrive digital magazines contains approximately 3,000 popular periodicals covering a wide variety of subjects and interests–from the New Yorker and The Economist to Smithsonian Magazine and Vanity Fair.

The Library is located at 53 E. 79th Street, between Park and Madison Avenue, just blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Central Park. The building is a welcoming place for members and the general public (who are invited to request books in the reference room), with reading rooms and stacks that are open for browsing. Details on building access for BSA-NYSL members are provided below.

How to Access Your Discount

First, become an active member of BSA! Memberships and renewals will be handled directly by the Society Library; BSA members can access a special join link by through the password-protected membership page on our website.

BSA members now access membership benefits through a password-protected page on the BSA website: https://bibsocamer.org/join-bsa/members-only-benefits-access/. All active BSA members have received the password via email; if deleted or missed that email, contact bsa@bibsocamer.org to request the password.

Upon logging in, scroll to the section of the website devoted to the NYSL membership benefit and click the join link. You will then proceed to the NYSL website to process your membership and submit your annual payment.