David Rumsey (born 1944) is an American map collector and the founder of the

David Rumsey Map Collection The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection is a large private map collection with over 150,000 maps and cartographic items. The collection was created by David Rumsey who, after making his fortune in real estate, focused initially on collecting ...

. He is also the president of

Cartography Cartography (; from grc, χάρτης , "papyrus, sheet of paper, map"; and , "write") is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an i ...

Associates. Rumsey has a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

and a Master of Fine Arts from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

and was a founding member of Yale Research Associates in the Arts also known as PULSA, a group of artists working with electronic technologies. He was also a 1966 initiate into the

Skull and Bones Skull and Bones, also known as The Order, Order 322 or The Brotherhood of Death, is an undergraduate senior secret student society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The oldest senior class society at the university, Skull and Bone ...

Society, before becoming associate director of the American Society for Eastern Arts in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. Later, he entered a 20-year career in real estate development and finance during which he had a long association with Charles Feeney's

General Atlantic General Atlantic (also known as "GA") is an American growth equity firm providing capital and strategic support for global growth companies, headquartered in New York, United States. The firm was founded in 1980 as the captive investment team for ...

Holding Company of New York and served as president and director of several of its real estate subsidiaries; General Atlantic eventually became the Atlantic Philanthropies, a Bermuda-based philanthropic foundation that is one of the world's largest charities. Rumsey was a lecturer in art at the

Yale School of Art The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in graphic design, painti ...

for several years. He has lectured widely regarding his online library work, including talks at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

, New York Public Library,

Digital Library Federation The Digital Library Federation (DLF) is a program of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) that brings together a consortium of college and university libraries, public libraries, museums, and related institutions with the stated ...

, Stanford University,

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, Where 2.0,

O'Reilly Open Source Convention The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) was an American annual convention for the discussion of free and open-source software. It was organized by publisher O'Reilly Media and was held each summer, mostly in Portland, Oregon, from 1999 ...

, and at conferences in Hong Kong, Mexico, Japan, United Kingdom, and Germany. From the early 1980s, Rumsey has collected more than 150,000 rare 16th through 21st century maps of North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Pacific, Arctic, Antarctic, and the world. The collection includes separate maps,

atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geograp ...

es,

globe A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model glo ...

s, school geographies, books of travel and exploration, and

maritime Maritime may refer to: Geography * Maritime Alps, a mountain range in the southwestern part of the Alps * Maritime Region, a region in Togo * Maritime Southeast Asia * The Maritimes, the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prin ...

charts. The collection is available on his website for free viewing. The entire collection is hosted in the David Rumsey Map Center that opened on April 19, 2016 in the Bing Wing of Green Library, Stanford University. The center contains rare maps and atlases in addition to interactive, high-resolution screens for viewing digital cartography. The davidrumsey.com website continues as a separate public resource.

Awards, associations and books

For making his map collection public, Rumsey was given an honors award in 2002 by

Special Libraries Association The Special Libraries Association (SLA) is an international professional association for library and information professionals working in business, government, law, finance, non-profit, and academic organizations and institutions. History The S ...

. The website, developed in conjunction with Luna Imaging and TechEmpower, won the

Webby Award The Webby Awards are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories includ ...

for Technical Achievement in 2002. On May 18, 2012, Rumsey received the Warren R. Howell Award from the Stanford University Libraries in recognition of his service to Stanford. As of January 2008, following are some of the institutions where Rumsey serves as a board member: *

John Carter Brown Library The John Carter Brown Library is an independently funded research library of history and the humanities on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The library's rare book, manuscript, and map collections encompass a variety of ...

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

* Samuel H. Kress Foundation * Stanford University Library Advisory Board * Yale Library Associates (as a trustee) * The Long Now Foundation * Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) *

American Antiquarian Society The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), located in Worcester, Massachusetts, is both a learned society and a national research library of pre-twentieth-century American history and culture. Founded in 1812, it is the oldest historical society i ...

He is the author of the following books: * ''Cartographica Extraordinaire: The Historical Map Transformed'' - with Edith M. Punt - * "Historical Maps in GIS" - with Meredith Williams, a chapter in ''Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History'' -

Digital Humanities conference The Digital Humanities conference is an academic conference for the field of digital humanities. It is hosted by Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations and has been held annually since 1989. History The first joint conference was held in 198 ...

keynote address

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rumsey, David American book and manuscript collectors Living people 1944 births

Awards, associations and books

See also

External links

References