Bibliographical Society of America (New York, N.Y.)

<p>The Society</p>
<p>The Bibliographical Society of America (BSA) is the oldest scholarly society in North America dedicated to the study of books and manuscripts as physical objects. It was organized in 1904 and incorporated in 1927 with the principal objectives of promoting bibliographical research and issuing bibliographical publications. These objectives have been and continue to be accomplished through a broad array of activities, including meetings, lectures, and fellowship programs, as well as the publishing of books and the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (PBSA), North America’s leading bibliographical journal. The Society is open to all those interested in bibliographical problems and projects, and its membership includes bibliographers, librarians, professors, students, booksellers, and collectors worldwide.</p>
<p>Mission</p>
<p>The Bibliographical Society of America 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, conferring awards, issuing publications, and collaborating with related organizations.</p>
<p>Values</p>
<p>We are committed to the field of bibliography as a critical interpretive framework for understanding books and other textual artifacts, and to bibliography’s enduring relevance to textual analysis.</p>
<p>We value the study of bibliography and the integration of bibliographical knowledge in a variety of academic, professional, and public settings.</p>
<p>We respect the legacy of bibliographical scholarship, while embracing new methods and new approaches. We encourage the application of bibliographical theory and principles to diverse materials and media.</p>
<p>We pursue collaborative, interdisciplinary relationships with cognate professional, scholarly, and bibliophilic organizations.</p>
<p>We seek to build a diverse, multicultural community that embraces academic and non-academic constituencies, students, junior scholars, and senior researchers.</p>
<p>Membership</p>
<p>The majority of the Society’s members are from the United States and Canada, but most European countries, Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand are also represented, together with institutions in Brazil, India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe.</p>
<p>All members receive a subscription to our quarterly journal, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, and discounts on the Society’s other publications, as well as a 30% discount on all books published or distributed by the University of Chicago Press. Members’ subscriptions include the latest issues in print and e-Book formats, as well as online access to the full run of the journal (coming soon).</p>
<p>Meetings</p>
<p>The Society holds its annual meeting each January in New York City. The meeting consists of a session of three papers delivered by New Scholars on their current research, a business meeting, an address by an invited speaker, and a reception. Recent speakers have included: Adrian Johns, “The Uses of Print in the History of Science”; Bettina Wagner, “Collecting, Cataloguing, and Digitizing Incunabula at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich”; David Pearson, “Books as History: Changing Values in a Digital Age”; and Owen Gingerich, “Researching The Book Nobody Read: Copernicus’s De revolutionibus.”</p>
<p>The Society sponsors its own conferences, as well as joint meetings with allied organizations, and panels and speakers at other societies’ conferences, in the United States and abroad. Past conferences include “Poetry and Print in Early America” (Worcester, 2012); “Reading in the White House” (Washington, D.C., 2010); “Book Catalogues: Tomorrow and Beyond” (New York, 2008); and “Roughing It: Printing and the Press in the West” (St. Louis, 2004).</p>
<p>Fellowships and Prizes</p>
<p>The Society funds short-term fellowships of one or two months to support bibliographical projects as well as research in the history of the book trades and in publishing history. In addition, it sponsors the New Scholars Program, which funds early-career scholars to deliver papers on bibliographical topics at a forum immediately preceding the BSA annual meeting. The Society also awards the William L. Mitchell Prize for Bibliography or Documentary Work on Early British Periodicals or Newspapers; the Justin G. Schiller Prize for Bibliographical Work in Pre-20th Century Children’s Books, and the St. Louis Mercantile Library Prize in American Bibliography. Further information on fellowship programs and prizes is available on the website.</p>
<p>Monographs</p>
<p>The Society maintains an active publishing program and is responsible for many landmark bibliographical publications. Among these are Joseph Sabin’s Bibliotheca Americana, continued by Eames and Vail (1936), Margaret Stillwell’s second and Frederick Goff’s third census of Incunabula in American Libraries (1940, 1964), as well as the Supplement to Goff (1972), and C. U. Faye’s and W. H. Bond’s Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (1962). The Society also supervised preparation and publication of the Bibliography of American Literature (1955–1991).</p>
<p>Most recently it has published Karen Nipps’s Lydia Bailey: A Checklist of Her Imprints (2013). A full list of titles in print is available on the website; a growing number of these publications can be found online through the ACLS Humanities E-Book. Society members receive a discount on monographs and on subscription to HEB.</p>
<p>PBSA</p>
<p>Since 1907 the Society has published the distinguished quarterly journal Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America. PBSA features articles and reviews on a rich variety of bibliographical and book history topics, including printing, binding, publication, distribution, collecting, and textual analysis. Individual subscriptions to the journal are available only through membership in the Bibliographical Society of America.</p>
<p>Institutional subscriptions and back issues are available from the University of Chicago Press, Journals Division, PO Box 37005, Chicago, IL 60637. Telephone: (773) 753-3347, or toll-free in the United States and Canada (877) 705-1878. Fax: (773) 753-0811, or toll-free (877) 705-1879. Email: subscriptions@press.uchicago.edu. More information is available at www.press.uchicago.edu/pbs</p>

<p>The Bibliographical Society of America (BSA) began as the Bibliographical Society of Chicago (BSC) in 1899...Early concerns of the society included bibliographical scholarship related to English works and the accessibility of rare books held in private collections. The BSC elected to produce a publication that contained scholarly work related to bibliography and also relayed the actions of the society and its meetings. In 1901, a meeting of the American Library Association (ALA) spurred the idea of the creation of a national bibliographical society. At the suggestion of the ALA, the BSC appointed a committee and began discussing the possibilities of a national organization...The proceedings of the committee were slow until, in June 1903, it was decided that the time for a national society had come. In 1903 and 1904 membership of the Bibliographical Society of America expanded and increased, and a meeting of the council in October of 1904 marked the true beginning of the BSA. In 1904-1905, the first volume of the Bibliographical Society of America Proceedings and Papers was published. In this volume the Constitution of the BSA was laid out and the object of the society was declared "to promote bibliographical research and to issue bibliographical publications." To pursue its objectives, the BSA holds meetings, lectures, conferences and joint meetings with other organizations. The BSA also funds several fellowships and prizes, including a fellowship designed specifically for early-career scholars. The quarterly Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (PBSA) publishes articles on pertinent scholarship as well as reviews and notices of happenings in the field. Since its founding 110 years ago, the BSA has issued over 108 volumes of the PBSA, has published over 40 monographs, and has grown from 145 members in 1905 to 930 in 2013 (BSA, List of members and annual reports, 2013).</p>
<p>This collection consists largely of business correspondence, financial reports, publications and monographs produced by the Bibliographical Society of America. Collection contains minutes from annual and council meetings; general correspondence, e.g., letters, telegrams, and email among BSA officers including presidents, secretaries, and the Council; financial papers include statements, check stubs, bills, receipts, financial statements, income tax returns and budgets; membership lists and membership correspondence from late 1940s-late 1990s; minutes of many sub-committees of the BSA, the largest being the Publications Committee; materials from the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (PBSA) and monograph projects, including authors' drafts, correspondence with the editors, and galley proofs; papers of the Fellowship Committee, including successful fellowship applications and related correspondence; and correspondence and other material related to printing and advertising. Also included are photographs, digital media (hard disk and CD-ROM) and ephemera.</p>