Carla Stoffle, Martin Gomez to serve as ALA

Contact: Elizabeth Dreazen


312-280-3202

For Immediate Release


November 2001

Carla Stoffle, Martin Gomez to serve as ALA Endowment Trustees

Carla J. Stoffle, dean of libraries, University of Arizona, Tucson, and Martin Gomez, executive director of the Brooklyn (New York) Public Library, have been elected to serve as ALA Endowment Trustees. The action was taken by the ALA Executive Board during its fall meeting.

Stoffle will serve a three-year term, beginning at the conclusion of the 2001 ALA Annual Conference in July and ending at the conclusion of the 2004 ALA Annual Conference in June. Mr. Gomez, who was elected to complete the term of a current Trustee, will begin serving at the conclusion of the 2001 ALA Midwinter Meeting in January and will end his service at the conclusion of the 2002 ALA Annual Conference in June. To provide orientation and assure continuity among the Trustees, both Stoffle and Gomez began serving in an unofficial capacity immediately upon appointment.

Stoffle has held a variety of leadership positions within ALA. She was a member of the ALA Council (1983-1993), ALA Executive Board (1985-1988), ALA Treasurer (1988-1992), and president of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of ALA (1982-83). She has served on many ALA committees, including the Committee on Program Evaluation and Support (COPES) (1984-1993), Office of Library and Outreach Services Advisory Committee (1997-99), Nominations Committee (1997), Endowment Campaign Committee (1989-1993) and Legislative Committee (1994-1996). In addition to her duties as dean at the University of Arizona, Stoffle also is the acting director of the university’s School of Information Resources and Library


Science.

Gomez, as executive director of the Brooklyn Public Library, also serves as a member of the Brooklyn Public Library Foundation’s Board of Trustees, a separate non-profit corporation, where he provides policy leadership and direction regarding the Library’s $10 million investment portfolio. Gomez is currently a member of the ALA Executive Board and has served on the ALA Council since 1992. He has served as chair of the ALA Office for Library Personnel Resources (OLPR) Advisory Committee (1989-1991) and director-at-large of the Public Library Association (PLA), a division of ALA (1990-1994). Gomez was president of REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library Services for the Spanish Speaking (1992), and has held numerous other professional and community leadership positions.

ALA Endowment Trustees have the authority to hold, invest, reinvest, and disburse endowment funds as directed by the ALA Executive Board. Candidates must be ALA members who have a working knowledge of investment opportunities available to endowment funds and of benchmarks used to judge fund performance. Trustees must have experience in management or oversight of investment funds in a business setting. Both Gomez and Stoffle exemplify and put into practice the skills and standards for Trustee selection.