Sam Lemley

Curator of Special Collections Director of the Posner Center for Special Collections Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh PA

Carnegie Mellon University
View more experts managed by Carnegie Mellon University

Biography

Sam Lemley administers research, acquisitions, exhibitions, and instruction in the Posner Center for Special Collections, CMU's home for rare books, manuscripts, and early scientific instruments and calculating machines. Lemley holds a PhD in English Literature and an MLIS with a certificate of concentration in rare book and special collections librarianship. Lemley has held research fellowships at the Houghton Library, Princeton University Library, the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, and Rare Book School at the University of Virginia.

Areas of Expertise

Early Scientific Instruments

History of science and technology

Manuscripts

Libraries

Rare Books

Curation/Collections

Industry Expertise

Research

Publishing

Print Media

Library and Information Management

Education/Learning

Accomplishments

Scholarly Work

He also edited a volume on Shakespeare's four Folios (Penn State University Press), published in conjunction with exhibitions mounted at CMU and the Frick Pittsburgh, and in 2025 authored Rare Books & Ancestral Machines: A Handbook to the Posner Center for Special Collections (Carnegie Mellon University Press).

Scholarly Work

Lemley's scholarly work has appeared in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, The Library, Studies in Bibliography, Shakespeare Quarterly, Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Hyperallergic, and other journals.

Education

The Palmer School, Long Island University

MSLIS

UNC Chapel Hill

Bachelors

Carnegie Mellon University

PhD

PhD in English Literature and an MLIS with a certificate of concentration in rare book and special collections librarianship. Lemley has held research fellowships at the Houghton Library, Princeton University Library, the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, and Rare Book School at the University of Virginia.