The Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library's mission is to be an active partner in the intellectual work of Bard's students, faculty, and staff; to develop collections and services that help all users become more resourceful, independent, and original scholars; and to take a campus leadership role in thoughtfully applying emerging media to the task of turning information into knowledge. As a result of a generous gift from College Board of Trustees Chair Emeritus Charles P. Stevenson Jr., Bard's library complex consists of the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library—designed by the architectural firm of Robert Venturi, a winner of the Pritzker Prize—and the Hoffman and Kellogg Libraries.
Library Resources
Bard's libraries house 400,000 volumes and provide access to more than 80 databases and 50,000+ online journals. Resource-sharing consortiums provide access to six million additional volumes. The Sussman Rare Book Collection, which is housed at the Stevenson Library, contains more than 1,200 items, including the 1493 Liber Chronicarum history of the world, two editions (1556 and 1680) of Magna Carta, and a 1792 first edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women.
Our Library Locations
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Presentation on Black student activism at the Stevenson Library by Talaya Robinson-Dancy ’21. Photo by Jonathan Asiedu ’24
Special Collections
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Campus work scene, 1955. Karl Wedemeyer ’55 and Pamela Lerner ’56 work on a Ford truck as part of their Community Service Project.The Bard Digital Collections include photographs going back to 1913; the Bard family papers; Poetry at Bard, an audio collection of readings and talks at the College; and Bard Makes Noise, an ongoing web-based project of Bard bands and musicians past and present. -
The Bard College Archives preserve the intellectual and social history of the College and its place in the development of progressive liberal education. Special print collections include the complete personal library of the late political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt, and her husband, the late Bard professor Heinrich Bluecher, as well as the collected Senior Projects of Bard students since 1938. In recent years the library has also received substantial gifts from the estates of Marius Bewley, a noted literary critic, and Olin Dows, a painter in the Federal Art Project.
