David Magier was appointed Associate University Librarian for Collection Development at Princeton University Library in April 2008. A specialist in South Asian Studies, he previously served for 21 years as South/ Southeast Asia Librarian and Director of Area Studies at Columbia University Libraries. He also served as Director of the Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research at Columbia. At Princeton, Dr.Magier is responsible for coordinating the collection development funding and priorities for subject librarians at Firestone and all the branch libraries throughout the University, and provides high-level liaison with faculty in all of the University's Departments and Programs. As a member of the library management team, Dr. Magier participates in key strategic planning initiatives, and works to ensure that Princeton's magnificent collections (in print, digital and all other media) grow systematically and dynamically to reflect the evolving trends of research and teaching in all fields at the University. He holds a BA from Cornell, and an MA and PhD in Linguistics (focusing on Indian and Pakistani languages) from UC Berkeley, and was a professor of linguistics at Berkeley and Michigan State University before embarking on his library career.

He is well known internationally for his librarian training efforts and his leadership in developing digital library/global resource projects (including especially the Digital South Asia Library, the South Asia Resource Access on the Internet, and the Digital Library for International Research). He is a strong proponent of careful collection shaping and cooperative collection development in the community of research libraries.