New YALSA director named

Contact:
Mary Ghikas

Associate Executive Director

312-280-2518

For Immediate Release

January 4, 2005

New YALSA director named

CHICAGO - The American Library Association (ALA) is pleased to announce Beth A. Yoke has been named executive director of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the ALA.

Yoke comes to ALA from Fairmont State University in West Virginia, where she oversaw collection maintenance and development for education and juvenile collections in the university library, provided reference service, planned and implemented bibliographic instruction for students and coordinated the school library media program.
She also designed and implemented interactive online courses for the school library media program and won a grant to be WebCT Mentor to other faculty wishing to develop courses.
Prior to going to West Virginia, Yoke was a school library media specialist at the North Stafford High School in Virginia and an educator with Teach for America in the New Orleans Public Schools.

She graduated in history, with minors in political science and African-American studies, from Gettysburg College and earned her teaching certificate at Tulane University.
In 1998, she completed her M.L.I.S. at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

While in West Virginia, Beth Yoke was active in the West Virginia Library Association, where she was instrumental in revitalizing the School Library Division and increasing its membership.
She served as the second vice-president of WVLA.

Members of the search committee were: YALSA President David C. Mowery, YALSA President-Elect Pamela Spencer Holley, YALSA Immediate Past President Audra L. Caplan, Public Library Association Executive Director Greta Southard, Booklist Editor Stephanie Zvirin, ALA Senior Associate Executive Director Mary Ghikas and ALA Human Resources Director Dorothy Ragsdale.