Since our earliest days, the Brown Library has relied on its friends. Now, as always, we need you!
General Membership
Includes our Among Friends newsletter, and invitations to lectures, exhibits and special events.
| $25.00 | Student |
| $45.00 | Brown Faculty & Staff |
| $60.00 | General |
Includes all of the benefits of General Membership, plus listing in Library recognition publications and non-alumni access and non-alumni borrowing ($400 or more).
| $100-$499 | Sponsor |
| $500-$999 | Patron |
| $1,000-$4,999 | Benefactor |
| $5,000 | Nicholas Brown Society |
How to Join
Print a membership form.
Our Friends
The Friends of the Library are book lovers, collectors, Brown alumni, faculty, parents, and students who share a passion for libraries and a commitment to education. Below are profiles of Friends members from our newsletter Among Friends.
Daniel G. Siegel '57
In 1992, I moved to Providence from the Boston area and joined the Friends of the Library as the first chairman of the Acquisitions Committee. During those years we purchased a number of editions of Euclid for the Library. In 1992, I donated to the John Hay Library the only extant manuscript of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
In 1997, Sam Streit invited Dan and Kathy Leab to exhibit their fine collection of Orwell first editions and association copies at the John Hay Library. I gave a talk on the manuscript of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Dan Leab gave a talk on the collection he and Kathy had made. It was a talk he had given previously at the Grolier Club in New York.
This time, however, he and Kathy made a decision to give their Orwell collection to Brown, and Brown now has the finest Orwell collection outside of England. Unquestionably, the synergy of the Orwell manuscript with the collection of first editions was compelling to the Leabs. It is a synergy all collectors and all persons devoted to the development of Special Collections should always hope to attain. For me, it was a very proud moment.
Ten years later I am still involved with the Friends of the Library. One meets fine people who have similar interests and hopes for the Library and the University.
The libraries at Brown have been an important part of our life. Marilyn (Mitzi) and I met at Brown in the fall of 1949.
Like all students we spent a good deal of time in the libraries at Brown because they are such a rich resource for learning.
For us, the John Hay Library was the main library.
We spent many happy hours together and individually utilizing its rich resources.
When I left Brown I entered medical school at Harvard and am still a funded investigator from the National Institutes of Health working at the Pennington Center, a unit of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. As part of my passion for medicine, I began collecting medical books illustrating the important milestones for the advances in medicine. Over the years I have given Brown some of these books, including the first edition of Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species which was one of the display books at the celebration of the 3 millionth book in the library.
N.B. In 1988, Dr. and Mrs. Bray established the George August Bray and Marilyn McClanahan Bray Library Fund for the acquisition and preservation of library materials in the history of medicine that are at least fifty years old.