Abby Smith Rumsey

Abby Smith Rumsey is an intellectual and cultural historian. She focuses on the impact of information technologies on perceptions of history, time, and identity, the nature of evidence, and the changing roles of libraries and archives. Her books include Memory, Edited. Taking Liberties with History (MIT Press 2023) and When We Are No More: How Digital Memory is Shaping our Future (2016).

Rumsey served as director of the Scholarly Communication Institute at the University of Virginia; Director of Programs at the Council on Library and Information Resources; and manager of programs relating to preservation of and access to cultural heritage collections at the Library of Congress. She served on the National Science Foundation’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Economics of Digital Preservation and Access; the American Council of Learned Societies’ Commission on the Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences; and the Library of Congress’s National Digital Information Infrastructure Program.

Board service includes: Chair, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library Advisory Council; the Stanford University Library Advisory Committee; the Society of Architectural Historians; the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia; and the Harvard Board of Overseers Committee to Visit the Harvard University Library. Rumsey received a BA from Harvard College and MA and PhD in Russian and intellectual history from Harvard University.