Kathy Rosa is new Office for Research and Statistics director

CHICAGO - Cathleen Bourdon, associate executive director for communications and member relations, has announced that Dr. Kathy Rosa will be the new director of the Office for Research and Statistics, effective May 21, 2012.

Rosa currently serves as an assistant professor of library, information and media studies in the College of Education at Chicago State University. Prior to her teaching position, Rosa has held positions in public, academic, school and special libraries. She served as the supervisor of adult services, collection development and technology at the Marion Carnegie Library, Marion, Ill., and as the technical services coordinator at the Pasadena Public Library, Texas. At Texas Women’s University in Houston, she served as a research librarian. Rosa served as the first librarian of the Challenger Elementary School in Pearland, Texas. She also served as the librarian at Space Industries in League City, Texas, at the Old Ben Coal Company in Lexington, Ky. and at the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection in Frankfort, Ky.

Rosa earned an EdD with an emphasis in instructional technology from the University of Houston. She holds a MSLS from the University of Kentucky and an MSE and BSE from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Rosa is an active member of the American Library Association and has served as the secretary of the Library Instruction Round Table and as a member of the Public Awareness Committee and the LITA National Forum 2011 Planning Committee. She has presented conference papers at the American Educational Research Association, the National Popular Culture and American Culture Association and the Society of Information Technology and Teacher Education. She is the author of “School Librarians and Book Selection: What Do Letters to the Editor Tell Us?” International Journal of Information Science(2011) and co-author of, “Libraries and Course Management Systems: an Annotated Bibliography” Library Instruction Round Table News (2011).

“We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Rosa to ALA and look forward to her leadership in serving the research needs of ALA members and the profession,” Bourdon stated. “Members of the Search Committee were impressed with the breadth and depth of her experience as a librarian, educator and researcher.” Rosa will be filling the position most recently held by Denise Davis, who left ALA to become the deputy director of the Sacramento Public Library.

Members of the Search Committee included Bourdon; Joan Giesecke, dean of libraries, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and chair of the ALA Committee on Research and Statistics; Sandra Hughes-Hassell, associate professor, University of North Carolina School of Library and Information Science; Keith Michael Fiels, ALA executive director; Marci Merola, director, Office for Library Advocacy; Annie Norman, state librarian, Delaware Division of Libraries, and member of the COSLA Research and Statistics Committee; Mary Jane Petrowski, associate director, Association of College and Research Libraries; and Cynthia Vivian, director, Human Resources.