Who, What, Why: Brian Vivier leads Global Collections at Penn Libraries

Brian Vivier, director of the recently renamed Zilberman Family Center for Global Collections, began his career at Penn Libraries in 2011 as a library specialist of the Chinese collection—one of 50 subject specialist librarians who serve as a resource for students and faculty.

In 2022, Vivier was appointed the inaugural director of Global Collections, which includes materials from Africana, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, Latin American, Middle East, Russian and East European, and South Asian studies. For Vivier, the opportunity to work as both a Chinese studies library specialist and now director of a wide array of non-Western area collections was a culmination of many years studying pre-modern histories, first, as an undergraduate at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and later as a graduate student at Yale, where he earned his doctorate.

“I was interested in histories that I didn’t think people wrote about, and histories seen as on the margins,” Vivier says. “If we think respectfully about the deeper past, it opens potential for how we might think about ourselves and see human life in a bigger context.”

Vivier’s work in recent months has been threefold: bringing the world to Penn to support scholarship by supporting the resources librarians need; addressing what he refers to as “information integrity” as materials around the world either disappear or are censored, especially in a digital world; and envisioning the physical manifestation of the new Zilberman Center on the fifth floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library. 

It's all in service of research and teaching at Penn, he says. He asks librarians to consider how the work they are doing right now will make an impact on future generations of scholars. 

“I encourage people to think about, when they look at what we are going to acquire, what the things are that are going to be dissertations in 5, 50, 500 years, and what do we need to do now to make the future possible?” Vivier says. “Imagine the future. Tell me what you want to do.” 

In his role as director, he says, he’s learned to view Penn “as a whole organism,” making connections across disciplines and languages, as well as encouraging more undergraduates to make use of primary sources. 

Transcending boundaries has become a guiding principle. 

For example, Vivier says, he’s satisfied when he hears about someone from the School of Veterinary Medicine asking for South Asian veterinary materials, or someone inquiring about the Libraries’ Indo-Caribbean collection. In 2024, Mengliu Cheng, a history doctoral student, received an award from the Association of Asian Studies for her dissertation in agricultural science that leveraged materials from the Zilberman Center. 

“We collect to support,” Vivier says, “and so it’s fun when someone comes up with a question from a very different disciplinary angle. “I really believe in what we’re building today for the future of Penn,” he adds.