David Pearson (librarian)

David Pearson (born 1955) was the Director of Culture, Heritage and Libraries at the City of London Corporation between 2009 and 2017; his brief covered London Metropolitan Archives, Guildhall Library, City Business Library, Guildhall Art Gallery etc.^[1][2] He retired in early 2017 to focus on his work in book history and is now a Senior Member of Darwin College, Cambridge (from 2016), an Honorary Senior Research Associate of the Department of Information Studies, University College London (from 2016) and a Research Fellow of the Institute of English Studies, University of London (from 2017). He is Lyell Reader in Bibliography, University of Oxford, 2017-18. He is a member of the Faculty of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, and teaches regularly on the London Rare Book School.

Education

Pearson is a graduate of St Bees School^[3] (1967 – 1973) and University of Cambridge (1974 – 1977, MA, PhD).^[2]

Career

He was previously Director of the University of London Research Library Services (2004–09), Librarian of the Wellcome Trust (1996–2004), Head of Special Collections at the National Art Library (1992–96)^[2] and a curator in the Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue project at the British Library (1986–92). He has lectured and published extensively in aspects of book history, with a particular emphasis on books as artefacts, and the ways in which they have been owned and bound. His books include Provenance Research in Book History (1994), Oxford Bookbinding 1500-1640 (2000), For the Love of the Binding (ed, 2000), English Bookbinding Styles 1450-1800 (2005), Books as History : The importance of books beyond their texts (2008), London: 1000 Years (ed, 2011). He was President of the Bibliographical Society, 2010-12.^[4][5]

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