David H. Stam

David H. Stam (July 11, 1935 – February 7, 2023) was an American librarian, scholar, and author whose career in research libraries spanned about forty years. He held senior roles at major institutions including The New York Public Library, the Newberry Library, Johns Hopkins University, and Syracuse University, where he served as University Librarian from 1986 to 1998 and later became University Librarian Emeritus and a Senior Scholar in the history department.

Alongside his administrative work, he built a strong reputation as a writer and editor on library history and the history of books. He edited the two-volume International Dictionary of Library Histories and also wrote memoir and historical works, including What Happened to Me and Books on Ice. In his later years, much of his scholarship focused on polar studies, especially the print cultures of the Arctic and Antarctica.

What makes his work especially appealing is the way it joins serious scholarship with a reader's delight in collections, institutions, and the people behind them. Whether writing about libraries, rare books, or polar exploration, he brought the perspective of someone who knew both the daily life of libraries and the larger cultural history they preserve.