Sean Quimby

Sean Quimby's portfolio includes the Kislak Center, the Library at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, and the University Archives and Records Center. Sean received his training in the history of technology as a Hagley Fellow at the University of Delaware and in library and information science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Broadly speaking, his research interests lie in modern archives, and the conceptual, ethical, legal and technological challenges that they pose to researchers and to the institutions that steward them.

He began his career at Stanford University, where he oversaw the papers of polymath and technological utopian Buckminster Fuller. As the Director of Syracuse University’s Special Collections Research Center, he led the multi-national Marcel Breuer Digital Archive project, and developed and taught courses, exhibitions, programs and publications. Between 2014 and 2020, he was the Director of Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where he worked to acquire, preserve and activate media-rich archives, such as those of counterculture icon and radio host Bob Fass, Dance Theater of Harlem founder Arthur Mitchell, artist, musician, and Talking Heads front-man David Byrne, and playwright Tony Kushner. An experienced fund-raiser, he has led numerous projects funded by private donations as well as grant-giving bodies like the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and Council on Library and Information Resources.